Get Out Your Tissues or First Steps for Griffin.

Welcome to the Gallery!

As I compose this blog post, I first need to say that I spent a bittersweet mid-morning watching my first born graduate kindergarten.  The cliche of time flys really never seems cliche to me, it’s just a fact.  The heartbeats that make up life are so treasured and when a milestone presents itself, I always try my best to slow down and breathe it in.  The biggest reason Casey and I  love creating photographs is because they stop the unstoppable and allow you to hold it in your hands.  A photograph is a tiny piece of history, or if we  make you a huge wall portrait it’s a fairly large piece of history, that simmers down the beauty and simplicity of your life.   

Upon entering my son’s graduation we had brought the pizza money and the lemonade we signed up to bring as well as our huge DSLR camera and monster lens to create the best mementos  for this occasion.  Ironically, as I turned my camera on to compose an image, an ugly little error message flashed at me “No Card” or in other words “No Memory”.  As I began to laugh to myself, which was normal ironic laughter as opposed to creepy maniacal attention getting laughter, one of my son’s friend’s mother, turned to me and offered her older point and shoot.  After snapping a few unsatisfying but grateful to preserve images, I put the camera down and experienced my son graduating.  He recited a poem out loud, and he went first.  This is huge for our kid.  The little group program was delightful and I teared up for children who didn’t belong to me but whom I had gotten to know from field trips and room events.  The idea of the graduation at first seemed a little silly to me, until I realized that the next phase of our family is about to begin while the other phase has come to an end.     

When Griffin(little boy pictured above)’s Mom contacted me, I was delighted to meet him as he was crossing over from crawling to walking.  She wanted to capture this sweet phase before it passed and soon he would be running at full speed, tearing up the ground beneath him.  For me, when my children were babies they reached a point where I couldn’t wait for them to crawl.  To see their chubby little legs and giggly faces move around independently of me was so exciting.  But once they began to crawl and soon to walk, not only are they a bundle of energy to keep up with and keep things from…but they rapidly mature into toddler personalities of identity and determination and the sweet, helpless baby doesn’t stick around.  As parents, we love to watch our children grow and discover new things while at the same time we want to cling to their innocence and naivite so that they will still want to cling to us for a source of guidance.     

For a brief window in time, baby Griff…once he was sure of the strange lady with the big black clicky thing, just crawled and walked around the gallery and a nearby park to show us what he thinks of the world.  And I think that he thinks that the world and his Mommy are pretty amazing.    

We headed to a nearby park for a change of scenery, not just for the photographs but because children learning to walk LOVE a change of atmosphere.  We observed him discovering flowers, rocks, blades of grass and tree bark.  It was so much fun and we know that Griffin had fun too!  I loved so many of the park shots, but the next ones are my favorites.     

Have fun observing your family and nature this summer.  Whether you are expecting a baby, raising a family, tending for a pet or planning a wedding, be present in all things you do and rejoice in your blessings.  And when you can, as often as you can, share your blessings with someone else.