Alexandra Elizabeth - Circa 1979

 

Hilary Anne - Circa 1979

I gave a successful PowerPoint presentation tonight at the Vancouver Rose Society monthly meeting. The subject was about scanning and taking photographs of roses. When I finished one of the members came up to me and said, “You really miss your wife.” That began my melancholy as I drove home.

When I got home, considering by over-a-week of preparation, I felt a sad.

I fed Niño and Niña and got into bed. Suddenly I felt melancholic, isolated and depressed. I looked around the room. I realized what was happening.

My bedroom has family portraits. All are unsmiling, staring-at-the-camera. I got up and went down the stairs. On the stairways, except for a couple, all the photographs are family portraits, all unsmiling and staring at the camera.

My realization is that only portrait photographers with a family might suffer from what hit me tonight.

As soon as photography was invented, by the end of the 1820s, photographers made the attempt of taking pictures of people (mostly children) when they were about to die. They thought they might get an image of the soul leaving the body. They, of course, failed.

In the bulk of my portraits, both my commercial and my family ones, I always place my camera at my subject’s eye level. Much has been said how taking photographs of a person, close in proximity to the camera and photographer, gives you a glimpse into a person’s soul or whatever makes that person be that person and not you.

That is further increased in intensity if your subject is a daughter, granddaughter or a wife (my case). You love them.

Looking at those portraits tonight made me think that I had looked into Alexandra and Hilary’s innermost being with my camera. There is a sadness in their non-smile and a sadness is added for me when I realize that I captured a moment in time that will not return.

I wonder if anybody else thinks about this as I did tonight.