The Worth of a Photograph

If I added up the hours spent learning how to work my Big Mama camera.

If I added up the hours of learning to edit, crop, embellish.

If I added up the hours to work through the likes of i Photo, Photoshop and Lightroom.

If I added up the hours of reviewing and relearning.....

I have to ask myself WHY DO I TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS?

This answer I know:

To revisit.

To remember.

To record.

To improve.

To share.

When I paint a painting, there is something substantive, something  tangible to hang on a wall. 

When I take thousands of photos, a few are shared, but mostly they are relegated to discs and hard drives. 

So it still comes back to the same reasons.

To revisit, remember, record, share.

Each single shot provides immediate recall. 
I know where I was. I know how I felt. I can remember colors, smells,  human beings living their lives, the lay of the land, the color of the ocean.

I want to remember the day the granddaughters put makeup on their good natured moms.

I want to remember the chubby pink fingers of our newest grandchild.

I want to remember the hopscotch run of an enthusiastic three year old with scabs on his knees.

I want to remember the waves  swirling around sandcastles patiently built, immediately dissolved.
I want to remember the women, working the tea plantations in the mid day sun, backs bent with heaviness. 

I want to remember the bountiful tender mercies in my life.

When I  grow too old to take the photographs, I will have these reminders, memories, of what tiny events have made up my existence.

And so I continue learning the new, relearning the old, shouldering heavy camera equipment,

wishing people would wait for me a bit longer while I take another shot

being irritated with myself as I hesitated a fraction of a second too long before clicking the shutter button.

This is a part of my life path I  find JOY in.

Heart Thought: and what about YOU?  

Sharing with Rebecca Brooks and her wonderful contributors at Postcards from Paradise.

Postcards from Paradise

These past weeks of absence from my blog have been spent in many places, falling in love all over again with our adult children and grandchildren.
For our family to see one another takes an act of Congress. Our families live in and out of the country. Last time together was three years ago.
My camera's media card was filled and emptied endless times. Each frame holding a "memory-second" in our time together.
I count it a blessing to LOVE to take photos. Whether they are stellar or blurry, they are a place in time.


They are my Postcards from Paradise.
as hosted by Rebecca at recuerda mi corazon

There are always "loads" of SWEETS in Paradise!

Postcards from Paradise

A reflection is a color filled shadow. 

Relax, Drift, Reflect

Heart Thought: where do your thoughts drift when your life isn't full of flotsam?

Rebecca Brooks  Postcards from Paradise

Window on the World

When I was a little girl, my Window on the World consisted of sitting in the loft of our barn or on top of the neighbor's garage roof. From those lofty views, the wire and wood fences  were the bookends of the World....

One day my third grade teacher pulled out a blue and brown globe. She spoke about China, it seemed so mysterious, colorful and distant on the OTHER side of the globe. 

"Other" to me meant THROUGH!  I could imagine no way to get there but to DIG down deep...and thus, I started a BIG HOLE with a very little red tin shovel.    

Just before entering my teens, my aunts took my sister and me on a JOURNEY. Crammed in a car, with no air conditioning, we crossed the farm lands of Utah, the desert flats of Nevada.....the lush vegetation of California ending at the OCEAN!!!!

Huge, Frightening, Noisy, Cold, Never ending, Infinity, the Pacific Ocean. Surely this was the true "bookend" to the World. 

Slowly years drifted  by, the windows of my world became larger, more transparent, more welcoming. I had a choice: walk through, or stay behind.

Windows can separate us, divide us, keep others out, make us strangers, alienate.
Or windows can be an open invitation to the other side.  
And yes, one day I did go to  China, but I left my little red shovel behind.


Heart Thought:  have you ever encountered a window that shut you out? Were you able to "go through to the other side?" 

Postcards from Paradise