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It’s the Details that Reveal a Person

29 March 2011

I didn’t follow the rules.  Our latest SOAR photography assignment was to interview and capture the details of both an elderly person and one of our children.  I really don’t know any elderly people.  If I still lived in WA this would be easier.  But, since I live in Ohio and haven’t had a lifetime to develop relationships here, I really and truly don’t know any elderly people.  So I thought long and hard about whom I should ask to stand in and I realized that this assignment couldn’t have come at a better time. 

At best, I am able to see my mom twice a year.  Luckily, she visited this month to celebrate my son’s birthday with us and I decided I really wanted to take this opportunity to capture her details. 
 Alexander is certainly a very important detail to her and she wanted me to capture her grandson with her.  Of course, I was happy to oblige. 
We’re very sentimental people, my mom and I.  My mom is the person that started my love for pictures.  She taught me to be proud of our history and we both cherish all the vintage family photos we have.  I can specifically remember going through all of my great-grandma’s pictures with her before my wedding.  We were enraptured by the history caught in time and proud that we have such tangible objects of members in our family that we’ve never met. 
We adored Grandma Nelson and it’s funny because I have the photos from her house hanging in my house now, and my mom wears and brought with her a cardigan that belonged to my great grandma. 
She’s a sentimental Harley ridin’ gal, that loves a good time. 

Surprisingly, trying to capture Alexander’s details felt more difficult for me to accomplish.  Alexander has SOOOO many details, that I wasn’t sure what to capture.  The boy has way too many toys.  Maybe that’s part of that only child syndrome.  I really wanted to go deeper than the toys though because there is so much to this little man.  Sure, we have our bad days, but he’s normally very agreeable.  His personality is one that puts people at ease. 

He’s constantly reassuring us that he loves us.  If he does something with me, he’ll say to Scott, “I’m going to do this with mommy, but I still love you.”  See how he’s loving on his grandma? 
His hands are always building something.  He's my little engineer that's always lining things up in perfect order.  No joke, we were in Target with my sister in law once looking for something and he took every chapstick out of a bin and lined them up on the endcap. 
Man oh man is he obsessed with photography like his momma.  He’s constantly, I mean constantly, asking if he can take pictures with my camera.  What’s a momma to do?  Well, hand him his own camera of course.

This is assignment was interesting and vital I think, as it's easy to look past the details.  Now, I'm looking through my lens a little differently and thinking about all the moments that I want to remember and capture.

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