New Gallery Posted: "Haynes Family"

On the mantel in the upstairs living room of my grandmother's house sit a couple of pictures of my Uncle Alan and my Aunt Lisa. The pictures were taken some time ago, probably a short while after they had been married but before they had my cousin Chloe. I remember the day my Uncle Alan and my Aunt Lisa were married. I remember the dress I was wearing. It was striped. I remember the yard where their marriage took place. There was a creek in the back. And I remember the cast on my arm from the compound fracture I had received after a rollerblading accident. My brothers and sisters and I were all still young. We could hardly even conceive of being married ourselves, nor for that matter our Uncle Alan being married since we had always known him to have been single. That's just who he was. He was our Uncle Alan, and there would never be a woman out there good enough to be married to him.

A lot changes over the years. Turns out the idea of marriage is not only conceivable, but it has become a reality for half of us kids in my family. And, tomorrow, Eric and I will celebrate our five-year wedding anniversary at the cabin we honeymooned at while Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on New Orleans. Maybe we'll watch another documentary on the mating rituals of the hippopotamus, or maybe we'll put in a DVD to pass the time while we relax in the floor on a pile of blankets in front of the TV. Mostly, I look forward to the stillness in the night, the chill in the air after the sun has set and that crisp scent of the surrounding trees. It's not Europe nor some extravagant trip to a tropical island, but it's us. It's the way that we like to do things. 

After I finished up the wedding photos, I had to take a break for a few days. Since I graduated from school, I've been doing nothing, it seems, except editing photos, one set after another after another after another. At times, I have been overwhelmed by the amount of photos that I have to go through, and at others, I couldn't get enough. Always, though, the desire to do what I have been doing has been there. And, always there has been something more to learn. It's nice that Eric and I have been able to turn this passion of ours into a business, as difficult as it has been sometimes to keep up with. But I continue to hope that, as time goes on, it will blossom into what we want it to be. 

From us, you can always expect something different. I tried to give these photos a straight-up edit but was simply not pleased with the result. I ask myself always whether I should just clean up the photos and make them look nice or whether I should try something different. And always the answer is the same. So, yes, the edit for these photos is different, something I haven't done before. And my last remaining question is: can we really call what we do "photography"? Image manipulation? I suppose the latter, but that still leaves me feeling dissatisfied. Image manipulation just sounds too disparaging to me... we are what we are, and we do what we do. Through the lens of a camera, we do not hope to freeze a moment in time, to preserve it for eternity. But instead, I believe we simply try to find yet another means for expressing ourselves, yet another avenue to communicate the ideas and the stories and sometimes even the memories that we have in our heads. And today's memory is the memory of my Uncle Alan and my Aunt Lisa on their wedding day transmuted into the reality of not only their life but our lives as family today.