It’s Me Again, Margaret.
When you read that title, I bet you heard the voice of Ray Stevens in your mind. Moreover, I’d be willing to bet that somewhere in your brain, you were taken back to a specific moment in your life when you listened to the song. Maybe you were in the car with your dad or cruising through the streets with your friends in the middle of the night. Having entirely too much fun mimicking Ray Stevens’ raspy laugh as Willard McBane torments poor Margaret.
The point is that those four words caused you to relive a memory - maybe even one that you hadn’t thought about in a long time.
Even if you’re unfamiliar with that particular song, there’s likely another tune etched deep in your mind that only takes a few phrases or chords to instantly transport you back to a specific moment. And if you pay close attention, there are probably even more details from that moment just waiting to come to the surface.
Maybe it’s the permanent musk of tobacco in your dad’s pickup truck. Maybe it’s the taste of warm beer you drank in your friend’s car (that you probably weren’t old enough to be drinking if we’re being honest). Maybe it even brings a sense of nostalgia with it.
A song’s ability to make us relive memories is nothing short of magic and photography has the same mystical power
Think about it.
There’s probably a photo of you - probably in a photo album that’s collecting dust on a shelf in your mom’s house - sitting in your old living room. In the photo, you’re probably sitting in front of your old sofa playing an Atari or Nintendo game, opening Christmas presents with your siblings in matching festive sweaters, or getting ready for a school dance.
Someone took that photo and forever preserved who you were in that moment for you and them to look back on one day and get to experience an echo of that day many years later.
And when you do look back on them, you remember so much more than just that moment. You remember that time you spilled soda all over that sofa (even though your mom had asked Lord knows how many times to keep the soda out of the living room). You remember how itchy and ugly that sweater was. You remember how nervous you were at that dance and how sure you were you were going to make a fool of yourself (and you probably did).
During private sessions with clients, I like to go to places like public parks where they can freely explore, be themselves, and create authentic moments. I’ll just happen to be there with a camera. Because then, they are actually making memories together that I can try and capture on camera and that they can look back on.
For me, the magic of photography lies in capturing the unscripted, the unplanned - the essence of a person or event that completely eludes staged poses. This is what I try to capture in my work.
The pictures in this post are all from recent events that I had an opportunity to change it up a little. At MTB races, I tend to focus on getting as many race photos as possible because seeing someone send it at top speeds is the point of the event, right?
At these particular events however, I was working on a few other projects at the same time (including an upcoming video project - more on that in a different post!) and ended up with more time to spend trying to use my camera to capture the community; not just the single riders as they fly down the trail, but their friends and teammates cheering for their podium victories and just enjoying their time together.
One of the primary rules of photography is to try to tell a story in every photo. To me, these pictures tell a story of a group of people who don’t just go to these races to test their skill, but to be surrounded by people who share their passion.
If somewhere down the road, my photos bring back memories of their time together, I’ll consider my work a success.
