Real Big

Last week I wrote this post about how making pictures was all tied up in my current heartbreak.

But sometimes you just need friends to get out a large format camera and spend lazy hours sitting in the middle of the road, making photos like people did in the old days while kids scooter circles around you. Then you eat pizza and watch them develop twelve sheets of four by five inch film in the kitchen sink, scan and eight hours later stare at bits of magic. That mountain afternoon, my little family growing up, caught so I can’t forget.

Sometimes you just need those same friends to send you a text that says “We’re picture makers… that’s what we do. It just is.”

And that’s enough to put aside all the anger and confusion over babies you can’t hold onto and images you never made, and take some steps back into life. The beautiful mess of life that deserves to be documented. Life filled with kids growing big and strong and friends who laugh troubles away.

Thanks Kaisers and Ellsworths

5-17-2014 . my first large format images . crazy camera with a shirt over my head, triX developed in the sink & scanned at home . photo of me by Jesse