So often I am asked “what do you like to shoot?” Truthfully, I love telling stories made of images across the spectrum of emotion and feeling. More and more the pictures I like to shoot are quieter and contemplative. Lately, these are the moments that live between the obvious ones, away from the celebration, and to me they reveal the most about my subjects.
Perhaps this is a phase I am going through. Perhaps it is how I feel after a year of transition from a steady newspaper gig to the life of a freelancer. From life in the mountains where the pace is slower and more deliberate, to a more hectic pace here in Durham, NC.
This year, traveling back to the mountains in southwest Virginia to shoot weddings placed the valley that had been my home for three years in a new context. I appreciated more the beauty that I had taken for granted there. There I always slow down with my camera and shoot more deliberately. The two photos above best reflect how I felt in each moment, captured after I slowed down.
The second image of the horses from the deck, just before the ceremony in Virginia, informed and inspired the first image of the cowboy (Brooke’s father) taken months later.
I wondered what was going through his head when I clicked the shutter. It was a moment that lingered, and I lingered with it.
Moments before, he was galloping around his farm where she was just married, and moments later Brooke and her new husband, Andy, would pose on his magnificent horse.
In the quiet by the lake, it seemed that he was taking in the fact that he had just given away his daughter.
What a peculiar thing love is. I leave you with a collection of quiet moments from 2011. Thank you, all who booked me this year.
As I slow down into the coming year, I hope to move more deliberately with both my heart and my camera.
Endless possibilities are on the horizon.
