Memorial Day

Cookout, turned cook-in, turned trampoline party. I know, now, going into any social situation that isn't my own friends or people who really know me, to expect the questions and comments about my camera. "Pretty big camera you got there, huh?" "What's with the camera?" "Are you a photographer or something?" I mean, or something... I guess.

It's just interesting. There are people who immediately wonder why their picture is being taken, like the boy in the first photo. We were watching Hercules, and I figured nothing could distract him. I was right about his brother, but wrong about him. Ethan immediately looked at me, asked why, and then asked to see the pictures, while I'm sure Ryan, his brother, didn't even notice I had moved to take the picture.

Adults will sometimes scream/giggle, mostly women. "don't take my picture!!" They dive behind their Better Homes and Gardens, or their husbands, who have the most who-gives-a-shit expression on their faces.

And then there are people like Jacqueline, who, for some unknown reason, just get it. She is relaxed and indifferent to the camera, and when I ask her if she'll put up with standing in a certain spot for me, she shrugs and tells me a story about her school or her friends, and then we keep talking, and eventually we have made plans to paint one wall of her room some time this summer.

Jacqueline is one of my favorite people, and if we hadn't wasted so much time doing flips on the trampoline, or playing baseball with a soccer ball, I would have made her stand or sit in various places around her entire house, which is old and covered from top to bottom in Victorian decor, 80s and 90s family photos, various stringed instruments played by Jacqueline's father, and books... thousands of books. Ranging from children's stories to any Christian related literature you can think of.

And Jacqueline seems oblivious to these things. She is open and unattached to much of anything, unless you include her dogs. Of course, I've known Jacqueline and her family for my entire life, but things change just the slightest bit when I look through my camera at a person. It makes things different, more real, more planned, easier to understand. It makes me categorize people in ways I wouldn't be able to without photography. It makes me learn people, and what makes them uncomfortable.

Jacqueline, unlike Ethan, is uninterested in viewing the pictures of herself. As far as she is concerned, we're talking about Penguins and Global Warming, and whether or not she has a deck of cards in her room. It's incredible.

(Sorry for the long and unnecessary break down of taking pictures tonight.)
(Oops.)