My photo output started dropping around 1993. No doubt this was partly due to the demands of family life, especially since we moved to a rural property that year. It took a lot of weekend work, but the property was a great place for our kids to continue growing up. The photo above expresses the togetherness of the family and the space of our two-hectare property, although this is only a small part of it.
However, family and home duties became a significant focus for me, and photography not so much. In these years, I took a few rolls of film each year, mostly of family events. There’s an exception coming up in 1995.
Fortunately, I took a few photos of the property as it was at the time. A quarter of a century later, I now wish I had taken more. When I look at this boring photo of an empty paddock, I see things that other viewers would not. I see the power lines that we eventually put underground after I dug a trench down to the paddock. I see the black edge of poly pipe in the bottom left and a trace of digging on the right, where I dug in a drain. I see a brown patch behind the power pole where there is now a dam, and an empty paddock where there are now fruit trees and a vegetable garden.
Photos are great ways to record physical achievements. Even though I enjoy my photography, I am still prone to starting a project and only realising partway through that I should have photographed the situation before I started changing anything. Still, I am very happy to have quite a few significant records.
Of course, raising the family was always the main game, so there were always new photos of the kids. This time the older three have their pet chickens. It’s a similar photo to the one from 1991 and I probably set it up with the earlier photo in mind. If I was a self-promoter, I would probably have taken a new one each year in the same style. I am not image-conscious in that way and I don’t think I will ever make it big on Instagram.