It was a bittersweet afternoon. My Rosemary and I hosted our family and we had dinner together. It was special, but because it was so special I remembered other previous gatherings that we may have taken for granted. The immediacy of this one (the first since Christmas 2019) brought that sad note that things are not as they were or should be but surely they now are.

Our daughter Ale arrived from Lillooet at about the time that Lauren showed up. Lauren had turned 18 on June 27^th and this was the first time that the excuse of the family dinner became a reason for a birthday portrait. I wanted to more or less replicate the photograph I took of her in 2012 wearing my mother’s red shawl. I did not push to forcing her to put on the Mexican top she had worn for that occasion. We put emphasis on the pose and expression. It was awfully easy and we only took five shots. But one should notice the almost impossibility of making the 2012 Ektachrome match up with the digital one.

But there were two surprises. In one (I have no memory of my camera shutter when that picture of her wearing her facemask was taken) the photograph serves to remind us of the times. The second one, I took forgetting to connect the flash to the camera. But my digital camera can take severe underexposure with digital aplomb.

One of the glories of being a photographer is being able to record the change of time in a subject’s
face.

The family portrait, as much as I would have wanted to not used facemasks, was much to dicey a situation so I self-timed it and we all posed as we did. But in late afternoon sun the garden was in a low contrast situation that I was able to shoot it without a light and we could go back inside and do what we rarely do these days.

To converse.