May Angels lead you in.
This picture means nothing to you.
You all know I take pictures. Everyone knows that. A very select few know why.
A couple of years ago, my Aunt Debi passed away from cancer. She survived breast cancer but bladder cancer did it. We weren't super close. But she was the really loud, really fun and totally crazy aunt. And towards the end of her life, I suppose we became closer. While she was in Ann Arbor for her surgery, my mom went with her and took a picture I took with her. The picture above. That picture was a random picture I took when I first started. I took it in the school parking lot. My mom gave my aunt that picture while she was in the hospital. And I guess it was the one thing that cheered her up.
She was staying at my cousins house while she was recovering from surgery and we went to visit her. I brought her some photo albums full of pictures to look at. And gave her another print from Grand Haven. To this day, she is the first and only person to have signed prints of mine. She made me sign them, which was the coolest thing ever to my 17 year old self.
That day we visited her, she said that if I stopped taking pictures, she'd come back and kick my ass. Her exact words. And to this day, I've kept my promise and will keep that promise until I run out of things to take pictures of, stop seeing, or die.
The reason I take pictures is to make someone feel the way she did. If I can make one person feel like that again, then I've done my job. I don't do this just for me. In fact, thats the last reason I do it.
In my mind, to be a photographer, you have to have the eye. You have to see everything as a photograph. And I do see everything as a photograph. Being a photographer isn't about what camera you have. Or about how you pose a person. Or anything besides how it makes you feel. And how you see the world. I make people see things how I see them. I want people to feel the way I feel while I'm taking that picture. And if anyone could see me after I've taken a picture that I'm extremely proud of, they would think I'm a nut, jumping around like a crazy woman.
This keeps me going. This makes me feel. And she is the reason I do this.
I will forever keep that promise to her.