canerino wrote: friscoron wrote:
I completely agree, Chuck, and appreciate all you have to say here. The best photographs are capturing real moments in life. That\'s the power of Family PJ.
Thanks again!
Ron
Thanks Ron! My friend Daniel shared a harrowing experience that he and his family had to endure over on our Family Photojournalist blog: http://thefamilyphotojournalist.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-surgery-documentary.html#comment-form
After wiping tears from viewing such an intimate set from the inside, I went back and reread the last paragraph of his introduction to the documentary:
\"Lastly, it has been my observation that emotions are often absent in photography, save the smiles and laughs, which, while valuable, belie an existence none of us can know exclusively. Sadness and pain are real. If we choose to omit those in our documentary, we do a disservice to our remembrance and create an artificial life, bereft of the things that made us value one another more deeply. I found no reason to leave my camera at home. This is our life, after all. For good or bad, I wanted to remember it. What follows are the moments from first entering the imaging area and donning the hospital pajamas to our eventual homecoming and the beginning of a new chapter of recovery. What follows is my view of those events.\"
While I can appreciate the beauty of a well crafted portrait of photographer\'s children, they rarely move me due to the contrived nature. I cannot put myself in that moment. I think this is in large part because they often have no \'feeling\' or \'meaning\'. Images like yours posted in this thread, Ron, have soul, meaning, and purpose.
Chuck, I love what Daniel has to say. The difficult things that we go through help make us who we are as we grow and mature, get older and wiser, and really start appreciating life in ways that we never could when we were too young and inexperienced to understand that.
A year ago, my Dad was in the hospital in New Mexico dying. Our whole family gathered and the atmosphere was very jovial during those times that Dad was conscious and interacting with us. Meanwhile, I had an uncle and a cousin and his wife who came from California to... well, I don\'t know what they were there for... to commiserate? I showed up with my camera and they just were appalled that I would take pictures of my dying father. So disgusted that they refused to come up to his room while I was there.
But we still celebrating his life! And those pictures that I took that day, and the surrounding days, were some of the most meaningful pictures I\'ve ever taken. I don\'t expect everyone to agree that I should have been taking pictures then, everyone deals with those things differently, but this is exactly what your friend Daniel was talking about up there.
Ron
May 22, 2013 at 10:54 AM
Previous versions of friscoron's message #11570311 « 1 picture that represents my life »
