A string of pearls
Children have a magical way of doing ordinary things. How they see and interact with the world around them is always fascinating to see. When you have a camera for these moments, it only gets better! You can capture these once in a lifetime moments, that can never be recreated.
When we moved to England from South Africa in 2001, we had to leave many of our belongings behind. What I didn’t leave without, were our photographs. I thought that if my children had the photographs on the wall and if they could look through the photo albums, that it would feel like home, even though we were in a new country. It would also be a way to keep wonderful memories alive.
The value of a photograph
What I did not realise was how valuable photographs become the moment you are separated from your family and friends and also away from everything that is familiar. Photographs are the medium for us to show and tell, to communicate stories. Even if you are thousands of miles apart, you are still able to share these moments with family and friends. Of course now with digital cameras and phone cameras, it happens in an instant. We don’t give it a second thought. where as in 2001, we still had to develop the film and then post the photographs to our family.
Digital photography
Apart from the fact that images can now be seen on social media or sent via chats, the most wonderful thing about digital photography is that we are able to take as many shots as possible. This means that it’s possible to really capture a moment. The most beautiful photographs are sometimes those accidental ones when you catch children just being children. When they don’t know the camera is there and they don’t know somebody is watching. It’s natural and spontaneous. No doubt there will always be that one photograph that would be the one to keep, or printed or put in the photo book, but I think of the string of pictures that freeze the moments, and that we shouldn’t leave out
A String of pearls
Each of these photographs can stand on it’s own and tell something, but in this series, there is a following sequence. The way the mum tries to hold her back, the girl’s strong and then in the last picture, how the mum took her hands away to let her stand freely and look at the ducks. It’s almost a little life story that plays itself out through these pictures. For this reason it’s like a string of pearls.
Picture poems
I am not even good with ordering from a menu or choosing which cake to eat when I’m in Demel or Oberla, and so is choosing which of the pearls in the string of photographs is the best. I am not talking “best” as being the best photography, but rather the best picture and moment. I think of this string of photographs as a little picture poem that tells it’s own story to who ever sees it.