Sorting through the photos for 50TTL, I was taken by surprise by the significance of this one. Back in the entry for 1983, I included the pic of the day our child Rachel was born, the first of four children to come into our lives. This photo, 26 years later, was taken at the moment that our youngest child, Nick, stepped into his car to drive to Perth, and became the last of our offspring to leave home. What an amazing set of bookends!
Some people plan for records like this. They photograph their children every year against the door jamb where their height is marked. I never thought to approach my children as a photo project. I just enjoyed photographing them for who they were, and what they were doing.
So when I realised the significance of this photo, I was surprised and delighted.
In the same year that our youngest left home, the next generation came along: Marg and I became grandparents. After a long break, it was back to baby photos. This time it was different. My grandson was not looking to me as one of his main carers, so I could take photos without also having direct obligations to meet his basic needs.
But our daughter’s family was a four-hour drive away at the time, and these baby photos had to be fitted into occasional weekend visits. On one visit, we were almost at the end one of those long drives home when I spotted a mob of cattle in an unusual line-up along the bank of a dam. I didn’t really want to stop so close to home, but I pulled over anyway with apologies to Marg and took the photo below. Another photographer with the same idea pulled over and took a similar pic.
I like the cattle pic well enough and I used it in some of the publications I prepared in my day job. Somewhat to my surprise, quite a few people are effusive with praise for the photo. Some pictures just touch a chord for other people. You can’t always spot that in advance, so sometimes you should just put your photos out there and let others make their selections to create a list of favourites.