Avoiding the Memory of You

Two

Two years ago

Gwyneth 

    "Are you done yet?"

  Little Matthew Thompson questions me just as I get his mother and baby sister lined up with perfect backlighting from the sun setting over the ocean.  The oldest Thompson boy has been threatening me with a handful of sand anytime his parents don't have him smack in the middle of a photograph. 

  Jillian and Sebastian Thompson took a big risk hiring me for their engagement photos when I was no one but a high school graduate with a nice camera and a desire to capture other people's lives so I wouldn't have to be lost in mine.  Eight years have passed and they still call on me at least three times a year to photograph the beautiful family they've worked to build. 

  It hasn't mattered to them that my prices are no longer as inexpensive as they were when I was eighteen. We've formed a photographer/client relationship that isn't easy to come by. They've never questioned my ideas, even taking one for the team during the end of their wedding reception in which Sebastian's fellow firefighter buddies turned the hose on the happy couple as they made out like a couple of teenagers under the spray of water. 

  That photo put me on the map, albeit the map of Alabama and the Gulf Shore area, but still. A map is a map in the world of photography where everyone believes they can pick up a camera, snap some photos on auto and hand over a thumb drive without an ounce of creativity. 

  I never let myself believe that I was truly any good, even when professor's tried to tell me that there really wasn't anything more that they could teach me after I'd mastered the class syllabus within the first month of each term. 

  At the age of twenty-four my blog was getting more interactions and reposts than I could've ever imagined. I still didn't feel worthy of the attention I began getting even when I was asked to host a retreat for aspiring photographers.  Utterly flattered I booked a house on Dauphin Island for the weekend long class and after the ten other women left, I stayed.

  "Matty!" Sebastian yells at his son, unfortunately not quite in the nick of time as I feel thousands of tiny sand pieces falling atop my head. 

  I could get angry and let frustration fly. Instead, I quickly flip around, my camera still at my eye and snap away at the giggling boy whose eyes are scrunched up and cheeks red.  His father comes and grab him into his arms, tossing him over his shoulder before running off to the water's edge, threatening to toss him in. I click away, his mother and sister in the forefront of the image watching with a tender smile. 

  "So, can I toss him in the ocean now?"

Matthew lets lose a full on belly laugh as his father jokingly holds him up by his ankle, letting his hair just barely touch the fading waves.

I snap off just a couple more frames before I give the okay. "Want me to get the soap, Matty? Take an ocean bath tonight and save your mama some trouble?"

  I already know a couple of these images will be placed on the walls of my home office.  Sure enough when I'm uploading the images to my editing software, I'm already writing down the file numbers to edit first.

  My office sits in the upstairs loft of the house. Smack in front of my desk is a huge bay window that overlooks the ocean that is just a good thirty feet off my back porch.  I prefer to meet with clients here in my home, so it's important to have my work showcased.

  I just really like to showcase it through out the entirety of my space.

  Just inside the front door you'll spot the photo from Jillian and Sebastian's wedding reception.  A few steps and around the corner are images of Natalie Banks birth story with twins.  That one is an entire series that tugs at my heart each and every time I let myself linger in the hallway.