Friday, March 07, 2014

A daughter's vision

Focusing in
Laval, QC
November 2013
For more Thematic "lying down", head here
It was late on a gloomy afternoon when our daughter and I decided to take a photo walk around her grandfather's neighbourhood. We didn't have a plan, didn't really know what we were looking for. We figured we'd know what we liked when we saw it.

Which is exactly how our walk played out. We left the heavy-hitting cameras at home. She used her iPhone, and I grabbed my wife's Canon. We could have been shooting with Kodak Brownie cameras for all we cared, because in the end I don't think what we captured mattered as much as how we captured it.

We wandered. We chatted. I listened to her talk herself into and out of countless compositions. I smiled at her sense of artistic logic and the way she got excited about the things around her. Sometime between the arched bridge over the river's tributary that divides one island from another in this peaceful enclave and the landscaped bushes in front of a nearby condo development, I found myself hearing glimpses of my wife in our daughter's voice. That same passion for life, that same fundamental goodness that sees her thinking of others before thinking of herself.

Beyond this shot and a few others like it, I don't much remember the pixels that we brought home that day. But I can hear her voice on that day, and I can remember how hearing it made me realize that all is indeed right in our world.

Your turn: Do you ever wander the neighborhood with a camera? What do you look for when you do?

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