The game wasn’t exactly anything to write home about, but the fans were fun!
Category Archives: RAZR photography
Olivia was officially accepted into Kindergarten for next year. She is thrilled. I am happy for her, but it has been my experience that once they go to Kindergarten, WHOOSH suddenly they are first then second then third graders, and then I suppose middle schoolers, high schoolers, college graduates… I will miss my fabulous outings during the day with Olivia: sipping Americanos and organic chocolate milk at Starbucks, trying on sunglasses at Anthropologie, lunching at the Cheesecake Factory, riding in the glass elevator at Tyson’s, playing with power tools to build fun crafts… Of course, I fully intend to keep doing these things with her wonderful and talented mother! But it will be noticeably different without our little one who rides along.
Take lots of pictures because they grow so fast.
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This afternoon, I drove down a typical Northern Virginia summertime road; the trees lining the road were massive, thick and green, their tops tangled 60 feet in the air over me, completely obscuring the sky and casting shade that easily ate up at least four stops of available light compared with the thick, hot sunny light from the freeway I’d exited only a few minutes before.
The speed limit was 10 mph and I was early, so I was driving lazily, listening to music and thinking about my childhood summer days at Camp Cottonwood. The smell of pine, lake water and dust is the same in Virginia as it was 30 years ago in Oregon, and I was marveling at how quickly 30 years have passed and here I am picking up my own children at camp when I turned a bend in the road and saw them.
Walking together along the dirt road, their backs to me (and, because I was “controlling my speed” as the signs along the road asked me to do, they were totally unaware of my car approaching), was a college-age male camp counselor with a little side-kick grade-school camper. They looked back and forth as they talked to one another, one up way high and the other down as if at the ground, and they seemed to be in no big hurry to be anywhere else in the world other than right in that moment. It was one of the sweetest photographs I’ve ever seen, counselor and camper against the picturesque backdrop of a hot Virginia summer day.
As I approached them, I noticed that the camper was somewhat of a wreck. Covered in dirt — or was that slime? Closer now, I can see it’s a girl, and she is clearly drenched. And somewhere beneath the black and brown dirt and twigs and twisted up whatever-it-was, I began to make out the telltale signs of pink Converse high-tops. And a tank top that might at one time have been a lovely Old Navy lime green. Sort of exactly what my littlest camper was wearing that morning when I dropped her off.
I pulled up to the counselor and the camper, rolled down my window, smiled and asked them if they were okay. They were fine, he told me, she just might have rocks in her shoes is all. Worried, I asked him if she was supposed to be wet and he said, “Sure!”
Later, I heard that while most of the other little campers jumped over the stream (including my oldest camper), and a few daring campers hopped deliberately into the stream and then sprang out to the other side in wet shoes, my littlest camper actually dropped into the stream and did a few push-ups! And there was a snake, and by the time I was tucking her into bed tonight, the snake’s fangs were merely inches away from her ankles…
So what does all of this have to do with a photography blog?
I don’t know who said it first, but I’m pretty sure it was Jay Maisel who first tried to impress it upon me:
Bring your camera; because it’s pretty hard to take a picture without it.
I’m glad I had my phone with me, because whenever I look at this photo, my mind will take me back to the image of my little girl, nearly unrecognizable in swamp attire, walking along a tree lined dirt road with her counselor. Unfortunately, you’ll only see it painted in words.
Perhaps this image will serve to remind me not to ignore the first, best rule.
[RAZR photo of Alexis, after I cleaned her up for the car]
(Camping tips for Moms: Lesson One bring a towel to cover the back seat!)
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How do parents “survive” (I’m trying not to gloat) 10 days of no kids in the house?
For us, it’s been a lot like college. I think I’ve run the dishwasher once, and that was only to clean coffee mugs and cereal bowls. Our bikes are parked inside the front door and last night we ate dinner in the bar at Mike’s American, rather than wait 2 hours for a four-top in the restaurant.
The only real difference between these days and college is that Carlos has a very good day job that he needs to be up early and responsible for (oh; well, different for me, anyway, because he went to the Academy), and we scramble each evening to call our parents at a decent hour — because, of course, that’s when we talk to our little people. Last night, the Teeny and Tiny voices told me how much they weigh on Mars and the moon and gushed about the laser show from their visit to the science museum.
What does all of this have to do with photography? Take advantage of an American summer tradition, sending the kids to Camp Grandparents, and you’ll soon see what rediscovering your original favorite subject brings to your lens!
[RAZR photo by Carlos; view by Sky Terrace atop the Hotel Washington]
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simply typing the words conjures up memories of careening south on US395 toward Southern California, a delicious road trip that living in D.C. doesn’t afford. so we did the next best thing: drove across town to check out the early beginnings of the cherry blossoms (which were not quite exploding in full-bloom pink, so I experimented with infrared) and then hopped a C-17 to the warm and sunny Southeast.
like most Americans, I watched with sickened horror as the waters flooded the city of New Orleans. I am not native to the Crescent City, but I married a local boy and the thought of the beautiful Jesuits Church on Baronne Street where we tied the knot filling up with water devastated me. and then I began to consider the locals, the people who had not just one event in the midst of being washed away, but an entire lifetime of living flooded, destroyed, gone. and if there’s one thing the people in New Orleans do religiously, it’s live, which only compounds the loss.
spring break began with a stop in New Orleans for café au lait and beignets before we walked across the street to Tyger Gifts. I looked up at one point in the store to find the four of us completely separated, each absorbed in our own interests, and even Mickey had wandered off into the child/toddler’s section, found himself a suitable sized purple and gold popysan chair and hung out in true southern form. we let the kids spend the night in unlimited sugar and play with their grandparents and we sat under a heater on the patio at Pat O’s sipping drinks, willing a romantic night on Burbon Street to stretch on forever. in the morning, we all met up on Baronne Street to celebrate Easter Mass and marveled at “our” church, post-Katrina, and the Easter parade that followed right next to our table during brunch. even in the midst of all that is left for that city to complete, so much of what’s normal and good is back.
next stop: Florida. “unplugged” by my definition is leaving my blow-dryer at home, wearing my hair tucked up under a new LSU ballcap from Tyger Gifts. if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
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this should have been our 2006 Christmas card, but it was a bit indulgent with only me in the photo. I’m just now getting around to unpacking the last of the boxes from the move and sending all of the photos from my RAZR to my inbox, and I’m finding that some of them are surprisingly good for a point-and-shoot. can you imagine if Holga made cell phones? wowza.
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… a Mickey adventure, but as I got lost in the sea of choices inherent to the city, this time in the shampoo aisle, I looked up to find my children amusing themselves with a version of hide and seek several shelves over. my razr does good in a pinch.
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