I have been writing a very personal post today, I really want to explain how much photography means to me and with a little help from these pictures I am going to try and put into words how I feel.
I love photography, I love telling the story of someone’s life through my lens so passionately I honestly can’t think of a better way of spending my time. I think that photography is one of the most precious things to us as people and sometimes it is only after a person has left our world that we truly can appreciate what a photograph can give.
I went to my Grandma’s memorial recently and it struck me that there are few pictures of us as a family. Brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, we rarely get the chance to be together, so I took a picture on my iPhone. Technology is making sharing our lives much easier in the sense that we always have a camera to hand BUT do we ever print these pictures? How often do we make albums? With a print it is tangible, you can hold that little bit of history in your hand and keep it there. We don’t have that same feeling with images on facebook, on CDs and on our phones. At this present time we have no idea what technology will bring to our future and we can’t guarantee how things will be stored.
I know where my Grandma’s memories are… in a shoe box in her old bedroom. Now, don’t get me wrong there are definitely problems here. One fire and five generations of photographs would be destroyed. Not to mention the photographs are getting so old, yellow and fix stained I’m not sure how long these photographs will hold out so I will be making copies of them very soon. The memories in these photographs are so very precious and are so much more important than when they were first taken. They are my history and all of my family’s love and devotion are shown right there on each and every frame. I can see relatives that have long past, my parents as children, my brothers as babies, aunts, uncles everyone precious to me and each one a memory that one day I want to share with my children.
Amongst the many, many photographs in the shoe box (we are talking hundreds!) I found my family’s wedding pictures. Wedding photographs are precious at all times but somehow when you are looking back on them years later they hold even more significance then you thought was possible.
The first photograph that I found on the pile was not a wedding picture but it did show three generations: my mother as a little girl, alongside her twin brother, my grandma and Great Gran sitting on the deckchairs with her dad looking into the camera (with cigarette in hand!) and her grandpa watching his herd in the background! The men were in suits! Utterly amazing! I never met my Great Grandparents so I can not describe the sheer pleasure of seeing them in this picture, I love seeing the dynamics in the photograph, even though it was a snap shot it is timed so perfectly it looks like it was staged. It makes me smile every time I look at it! 🙂 By the way… I think one of the little ones took a pen to it because it certainly wasn’t me!
My parents who were married in my Mums hometown of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire. The suit my Dad is wearing was apparently very nearly blue and a type similar to those that Teddy boys used to wear! if my Mum hadn’t gone on “where the heck is Peter alert” it might have been a completly different picture!!
In contrast her parents married during the second World War and her Dad and mum were both in blue! Her Dad because he was in the RAF and her Mum because it complemented his uniform and the choice available wouldn’t have been great. However they make a handsome couple don’t you think? The picture was hand painted and my Mum loves it because it’s the only colour picture she has showing my Grandpa’s rather unusual shade of auburn hair.
When my Mum was sixteen she was asked to be a bridesmaid for a close family friend and her dress was made by her Gran. This picture always makes my `mum smile as it was the first time she had drunk alcohol in any quantity and ended up having a champagne hangover! Well I guess if you are going to get intoxicated do it in style!!
This wedding photo is my Mum’s Godparents and her Mum is that stylish lady stood on the groom’s right.
This wedding picture is a bit of a mystery, my Mum thinks its one of my Great Grans sisters weddings, but whoah look at those hats! I just had to include it. i mean have you ever seen anything like it before?!
So if there is one thing I want you to take from this is go and print out your pictures so you have the memories close to your heart forever.
A picture tells a thousand stories,
So go find your story.
