WE ARE OUR FACES – june & july 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a bowl by my front door that holds my used film canisters, while they wait for their ride to the lab. When I went to scoop up the summer batch and take them in, I was surprised at how little there were.

Only Four. Four little used film canisters were all that waited for me in that bowl.

Annoyance rushed over me, not believing that with everything we had done over the summer I had only managed to capture this much of it on film. Four measly rolls, I thought, pshhhhhhh. There should be more than that, I thought. One of them was black and white, and I realized with more annoyance that I hadn’t purposefully taken a roll of black and white, so that one was probably going to SUCK. Then I thought, screw it, oh well, and let the buzz of the unknown take the place of all that.

Sure enough, the black and white roll turned out to be the roll I shot in colorful Palm Springs. FULL OF COLOR Palm Springs. Where I shot specifically with all those colors in mind.  Could not be worse. Doomsday. Grieving certain shots I saw so vividly in color. Will share in another post. Along with the grief I am already laughing about this whole thing and sort of loving the results too, loving them FOR the mistake, for the lack of control I have. Loving that I can learn more about myself from the mishaps than the ones that easily make my heart beat harder.

But the ones that make my heart beat harder are just sweet as pie, and that’s all right.

Like the graduation field with my daughter looking up for us, my husband under the towel with my sons, my friend and her boys on the pier, the flags on the Woodie, my daughter in my hat with the tan lines on her back.

Sweet as pie and reminders that while I may not always get the moments I want on film, they are always there waiting for me. Lucky, lucky me.