Love

I have been thinking about permanence a lot lately. When you're young, I suppose, you treat relationships poorly. Maybe you always do this. I have tried earnestly to set my life right, to make clear my feelings and intentions, but even I have been careless in showing true love and appreciation. You fight with your parents. You are unfair to your friends. You are painfully casual with your lovers. You hold back. You take love for granted... and other people, because, at times, it is less messy to just cut everyone out. It feels like an accomplishment to go it alone. And you do this because, I guess, you assume you have time to come back around and, say, fix it all, or at least tell everyone how you really feel... what they really mean. Maybe we do have time to sort everything out. Maybe we don't.

I hate saying goodbye to love. I am scared to be alone. Most people will not admit this to you. And most people will say: "You start over. You meet new people. You'll be fine." I guess those statements bother me because they seem to establish people as temporary accessories to our lives. And though temporary is the mode of life, I don't want to treat other people that way.

I can make all of the most beautiful photographs in the world... and that can be my sort of permanence. As photographers, we treasure moments and capture whatever moves our hearts. And there aren't any rules. Most of the time, we make these photographs for ourselves. But what inspires us to keep going? Who do we look to to see the world in a new way? I think one of the only things that has kept me going through it is love... and falling in love has filled my life with beautiful photographs. I have a life that has been, in the past year especially, heavily documented. These photographs remind me that, even on a bad day, someone thought I was special enough to take my picture. I look through this blog. I've only had it a year. Most of my photographs are of the same few people. Maybe that is all I've really seen. Maybe, more than the flowers and the birds and the sweeping landscapes of Southeast Ohio, that is all I've really cared about.

I think I might've lost the point of photography if it isn't to share love. If your goal is to tell a story, what about the story of your own life? I didn't really have a point of view until I started really seeing what was right in front of me. The world is beautiful. Dare I say, it is people who make it so.

I am here. At some uncertain time in the world, I won't be. "If you love someone... never let them go," you say. I realize that an online blog hardly seems like the place for this, but why not? Why do we take these photographs? And what is our point in sharing them? What do we hope for, in our own lives, by taking pictures? I look at photo blogs everyday. Now, perhaps, you're looking at mine.

Maybe I have found comfort in the photographs beyond what they really are. I am young. Life is in flux. But I am someone... I have something to offer. These photographs are the stories of the people that I love. That, beyond whatever my education and skills profess, is what matters to me. It has defined me. I absolutely could go nowhere without love to give me all of my reasons. No matter my eventual profession, I care about using my craft and my gift as a communicator, in whatever form, to share and experience something so rare, yet so profound, it stops me... wherever I am, whatever my worries.