Shine onRichmond Hill, ON
November 2009
About this photo: This week's Thematic Photographic theme is 2009, the year that was. As part of this theme, we're asking folks to share their favorite photos from this past year. If it tickled your fancy, we want to see it. Click here to dive in.A day before my father would have celebrated his 75th birthday, we gathered at my sister's place to spend some time with my mom and begin to learn what our lives without him would feel like.
It wasn't fun. While I was glad to have the opportunity to spend time with my mom and my sister and her family, it was difficult to escape the shadows cast not only on the day, but on our lives. It seemed so odd to not have him there, to relate to our mother as an individual and not as part of our parental team. But we knew we had no choice in the circumstances that led us here. What mattered was how we chose to go forward from here. I'm not sure it'll ever feel right, but we'll keep trying.
As the late afternoon sun cast ever longer shadows outside, we took the kids for a walk to the neighborhood park. After letting them run themselves ragged in the playground, we took a long stroll around the walking path that winds its way through the quiet fields. At one point, I fell behind the group because I kept seeing a flash of some kind from the large floodlights overhead. I walked back and forth in the grass trying to get the reflections in the glass just so, and eventually found a tiny sweet spot that resulted in this three-colored shot.
It's the kind of picture my father would have chided me for taking. Because he had his way of looking at photography, I had mine, and rarely did the two converge. As I stood in the middle of a field and stared up into the spectacle in the sky, I smiled at the thought before returning to reality.
Your turn: I wanted to start the new year with something related to light. History is full of examples of light banishing the darkness and showing us the way, and it's always helped give me focus when things look darkest. What does light mean to you?
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4 comments:
A photograph taken in 2009 which reminds me of the good company I enjoyed during that year.
http://rinklyrimes.blogspot.com/2009/02/294a-candle-light.html
nice post. thanks.
That victory of light over darkness is pretty central to every major belief structure -- religious and otherwise -- in the world. Probably central to most minor ones too.
I love this shot myself. The different angles taking the same light and turning it just slightly to make it unique. Much like all those religions taking the same concept and making it unique within the context of their paradigms. But fundamentally? It's all the same idea.
I get the question "Why did you take a picture of that all the time. It's been that way since my first Instamatic when I was six. I just smile and shoot on.
Thematic Photographic 82: "2009 - The Year that Was" v.3.0 - Nuv Yug, Roller Derby, and The Fourth (and Third) of July
I was so glad to share our family's Solstice Spiral with my friends this year! We adapted it from another family's Advent Spiral. Here's the skeleton, lots of room for adaptation - can be ceremonial and serious or (like ours) fun and perfect for 5-95 year olds ;)
One candle is lit in the middle of a dark spiral; circle of people holding unlit candles; one by one walk in darkness, towards the source; "renew your light" by lighting your candle; as light emerges from center, acknowledge the light of each carrier in your life; lit candles are placed on the spiral to help light the way of those yet to walk; the end is a brightness of collective light - an amazing visual reminder of how much we mean to each other. How easy it can be to re-light one another on our darkest days... The candles I've decorated for Spirals past are sacred keepsakes for just those days ;)
Here's a picture of ours this year... lined with our sacred keepsakes Solstice
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