The Change

Snead’s Asparagus Farm, Caroline County, May 2023

I find great comfort in these words from Deb Benefield. Deb is a dietician but her work extends far beyond the boundaries of eat this, not that.

Midlife means Change. Heck, menopause was actually called "The Change" when I was a kid. Most of what is familiar in your life, including your body, begins to shift under your feet. Most, if not all, of these changes, are outside your control.
Kids grow up.
Marriages may shift.
Friends and family members get sick and pass on.
Careers don't feel quite the same.
Your clothes no longer fit.
Your body doesn't work the way it once did.
Understandably, you want to white-knuckle around how you eat and exercise, grasping for something to hold steady through the storm.
The thing is, this time of transition is actually an opening! This time can be your chance to reclaim your desire, pleasure, comfort, power, and freedom.

I have been trying to white-knuckle this entire season of my life. Trying to maintain. To find fault and fix. To control, manage, and cope. All of this as a way to hold on. And I’ve seen not holding on or holding up as some kind of failure on my part.

Even in this space, I’ve tried to corral my pictures. Set them into projects. Force posts into formats and schedules.

All of this, rather than simply accepting and celebrating what is.

There is a clearing ahead, and it centers on gratitude. What a welcome relief!

A few notes on collaboration. There are a lot of variables in photography and as much as we may think of photography as a solo pursuit, the work really thrives with collaboration. That might be a conversation with a friend who gets it or even better gets you. It might be a long-term project with a fellow photographer building a body of work or creating a photo book. Or it might just be the relationship you cultivate with your photography lab. The photographs in this post were developed and scanned by theFINDlab, and I couldn’t be happier with the results. These folks are awesome. They were kind enough to provide feedback and it was really interesting to have the input and get out of my own head.

These were all extremely well shot and were a pleasure to edit! You captured the town so well and made all of us want to go there as well. We especially loved frames 1 and 11.

You did very well adapting in multiple lighting situations and making sure that you had enough light.

You shot very well for your preferences and you have some gorgeous shots here!

Keep up the great work! Thank you for choosing TheFINDLab!

This photo of the old crab apple tree with the bee boxes in the background, taken at Braehead Farm, was not a first-love of mine. But when the folks at the lab shared that they loved frame 11, I went back and took a second look. And fell in love with every last detail. Love grows.

Photos I took in the Month of April

If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes. —Agnès Varda

Quilts on the line, Spotsylvania Courthouse, April 2023

In-the-Making.

To make sense of the world. A really good book. “You Could Make This Place Beautiful” by Maggie Smith.

To make me laugh and give me perspective. More Wiser Than Me podcasts with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Not self-help. Funny and irreverent. Entertaining. A beautiful testament to the many ways to age where one size does not fit all.

To make life sweet. Sugar-Crusted Raspberry Muffins. (The myth of sugar addiction has been debunked. Why did I ever believe the endless diatribe of diet and wellness culture?)

To make way for a new project. I generally prefer to take pictures of whatever I am drawn to first, and then edit later. But sometimes it is overwhelming to sort and sift through my work and see the direction, the theme, the whole from the pieces. To help with this process of editing and sequencing photos, I often tape pictures to my dining room wall. This is effective but somewhat damaging to the wall. And so, I ordered felt wall tiles from Felt Right. My design is 4 feet x 5 feet. Square tiles, with a shiplap pattern, in a neutral ash color. I can arrange and re-arrange small versions of my favorite photographs using push pins. The wall is beautiful and the felt acts to dampen the sound in this room with lots of hard surfaces. It was super easy to install and I am totally pleased. (I do realize that it’s an easy thing to create a storyboard in Lightroom, but I am old-school and love the physicality of prints and movement.)

To make pictures. I’m using a Pentax 645N medium format film camera. I love that it’s much like an SLR experience. But unlike a complicated digital SLR camera, there is absolutely nothing about the camera that I find unnecessary. (Really, I’m tired of paying for the fanciest model when I only need the bare bones. This goes for cameras, cars, kitchen gadgets, clothes, phones, and a bunch of other stuff.)

To make prints. I’m ordering test pictures from several photo printing services. ProDPI. Nations Photo Lab. I’ve tried several labs over the last month and the variability is significant. I’m looking for an affordable service with quality results. I’m super picky about prints.

I finish the book by Maggie Smith and ask myself, How can I make this place beautiful? The answer is surprisingly simple. Pick up the camera and notice.

Course Corrections

Garden Shelf, April 2023

I’ve been listening to a new podcast, Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus wants to know why the hell we don’t hear more from older women, so she’s sitting down with Jane Fonda, Carol Burnett, Amy Tan, Diane von Furstenberg, Isabel Allende and Fran Lebowitz (and more!) to get schooled in how to live a full and meaningful life. Join the Emmy award winning-est actress of all time on her first-ever podcast, where each week she has funny, touching, personal conversations with unforgettable women who are always WISER THAN ME.

I’ve been giving thought to my own third act and what I would like for these years to look like. It feels good to look back. And necessary.

Working with film over the last 6 months or so has helped me to slow down and settle down. Learning something new has given me confidence and reassurance. Waiting to see the pictures, living with uncertainty. Allowing for frustration. Walking away and then coming back again. It feels like learning a new dance where we keep stepping on each other’s feet. But so worth it in the end.

For the last 8 years this space has been a lifeline for me. Part photography but mostly a journal to sort through my feelings. Creative expression is healing; it’s like medicine for me. And maybe for us all.

I’m ready to switch things up a bit. I’ll continue to write my heart out in tattered notebooks and journals long-hand with a ballpoint pen. But I don’t need this space for that purpose anymore. I do need a home for my work, and this will be where my photography will live. I plan to publish a post each month to share what I’m working on. Pictures I’ve taken. Poems and prose. Projects. New things I’ve learned. Directions and course corrections. Books, exhibitions, celebrations and challenges. I’m interested in living in that place where there is no one right answer, and I hope that sitting with things for an extended time will help my creativity to thrive.

Stop by or write anytime. I’m always happy to hear from you!

I’ll aim to post near the first of every month.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that the goal in photography was to make pictures about something rather than of something. In fact, I’m pretty sure I learned this axiom in multiple places and from multiple teachers or experts in the field. For a long time, I understood this to mean that that my photographs needed to be less concrete or maybe less superficial. They needed to express some theme or emotion. They needed to be meaningful, deep, evocative. For a while, this belief held me back, keeping me from just pointing my camera at what I noticed, as I paused to consider if the scene in the frame was, indeed, about something.

And then, as in most every learning journey, the fog began to lift and I could see my way clearly. The truth is this: I take pictures of what I am passionate about, what I am drawn to, what resonates with me, and most of the time, I have no idea why. At least, not in the moment. As I live with these pictures over time, returning to visit them like old friends, I begin to see connections between them. I can see how they relate and what meaning they hold for me. Just like relationships between friends, the connections between the pictures in a body of work are not always easy or obvious. The bonds are felt more than reasoned. And this is more than enough to tell a story or write a poem with pictures.

These two film photographs were taken in my hometown of Colonial Beach, Virginia. When I visit now, I am more tourist than local. In many ways, it is hard to watch the town grow—new condos going up and every spare inch of real estate being developed. But this will always be the place where I grew up. Where I swam in the river, had my first kiss, and graduated from high school. Where I returned week after week as long as my mother lived there. If it is home that grounds us, this will always be where I am rooted.