I would like to say that this was a Christmas Eve candid of Kemper and Nora gazing into the lights and contemplating the true meaning of Christmas. I would like to, but that would be disingenuous. This “candid” took a half hour of bargaining and cajoling, many takes, and ultimately one perfect photograph. In the end, though, that is what matters on Christmas–the memory of the moment, and not the chaos that went into the whole charade. Christmas this year was one of the best I can remember, certainly in my adult life. On Christmas Eve, I gave Kemper my old DSLR (a Nikon D40), which he will grow into and out of faster than a pair of tennis shoes. On Christmas morning, we went to the Nocatee Preserve for his first photography outing. As he took photographs of sticks and tree trunks, I thought back to when the photography bug first bit me in middle school. Although Kemper is very young, only turning six at the end of January, he is just as curious as I was at that age, and he loved walking with me while I took pictures in the preserve or among the driftwood at Big Talbot Island. Now he has his own camera, and in time, he will develop his own tastes. As I said in a previous post, I have no doubt he will surpass me in time, when his patience kicks in (perhaps when he is thirty or so), but for now I will enjoy my little photography buddy. I will teach him all I have learned, but the pose–that is all his own.
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ST. AMAND PHOTOGRAPHY 