When Photos Are Personal; a Post on Visual Voice – Poulsbo Documentary Family Photographer

This is a post about Visual Voice.  I promise.  Just stick with me….

One of the benefits of blogging is the ability to write on one day and schedule to publish several days later.  So by the time this publishes things will be different and, presumably, the metaphoric storm will have passed.  But, guys, the past few weeks have been absolutely sh*thouse!!! Life has been like a bizarrely sadistic adult version of “If you Give a Mouse a Cookie” only the Mouse is me, the Cookie is the last several weeks of pregnancy, and the story follows a domino effect of events, one even more obnoxious than the last. But, as a result, it’s profoundly reminded me why I shoot; why it’s important to me as an act of self expression and what makes an image meaningful and not just interesting or technically complex.

Truth be told, since I’m an everyday sort of shooter so many of my images are not particularly inspired. They are a practice in improving craft, acknowledgment of an event that should be documented for posterity, or the sight of beautiful light that needs to be experimented with.  But rarely is there a moment that stops me dead in my tracks and makes me photograph it, not because it’s pretty or there’s an interesting gesture or that it’s low hanging fruit that will casually garner some “likes” Facebook.

To give you a brief run down of where I’m at, as of writing this I am 36 (almost 37) weeks pregnant, my husband had to go overseas on a last minute trip wherein much of the trip he is only in communication via email whose service is spotty and unreliable at best.  This last minute change of plans forced me to off load my ticket to a photography conference I signed up for this past spring.  Mere days after my husband leaves our 4 year old and myself at home I get slammed with the worst head cold I’ve had in recent memory.  Then, I have to cross my fingers that Hurricane Matthew doesn’t cause damage to the condo we own in Charleston, SC.  (Sounds like everything is A-okay but still waiting on confirmation from our property manager.) I recover from said cold just in time to prep our pantry and home for the remnants of Typhoon Songda to hit the Pacific Northwest.  Have you ever seen a super pregnant lady climb a 6 foot ladder to clean a cobbed up section of gutters?  Cause that’s what you would have seen around here on Wednesday evening.

All the while I’m doing my best to keep the day in/day out running; getting the kid to school, keeping the house in a – not clean – but livable condition, and getting the cat to the vet every 3 days to have one of the techs administer the chemo pill I cannot handle while pregnant.  All arguably some seriously first world problems?  Yes, absolutely.  But what are the freaking chances of all this stuff going down in a matter of like 2 weeks?  I mean, seriously.

Point is, during the height of being sick and miserable I told my son that he could watch some TV if he let me take a nap.  My nap ended up being about 2 hours long and when I woke up I found my son, who never seems to nap, passed out on the other side of the couch.  My very first response was to take a photograph so that I could later reflect on this moment of grace and so this moment could help serve as an tangible relic to define this odd and exhausting series of days in my life.  And this is photographic voice.

For those of us who discover a photo instead of building a scene from the ground up voice can be a hard thing to suss out and understand.  Often times it’s a quiet little whisper that draws you to a scene and taps you on the shoulder when it’s time to press the shutter.  But every now and again the voice will yell.  When searching for your visual voice these are the times you need to pay attention to as they can be the linchpin tying together a body of work determined by whispers.  So listen, listen hard for the moment your voice yells. It will force you to leap off the couch because you see a moment that is significant; a moment you know will emotionally pull you back in time when you view it years from now and a moment that carries a message you’d like to share with the world.

For me, that message is often times misery is accompanied by a small helping of grace, if you are willing to see it and that a shift in perspective can make an irksome series of events an adventure since all good stories thrive on conflict.  And I’d rather live a good story than an easy one.