Moments and Memories

We never knew we were making memories.  We just knew we were having fun.

As a child I knew my four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction from winter.  Known for having the best on earth, people travel from all over the world to experience Utah’s snow, but any child in Utah will tell you that the “perfect snow” isn’t that ski powder, and it lasts only for a moment.  That wet, sticky, wonderful cold that we all think of when we see snowball fights and snowmen, lasts only for a day, and falls only a few times a year.  Once it stops snowing, the cold sets in, and the dry snow turns to ice, slush, and powder, and the moments of today turn to the memories of tomorrow.

The same is for any moment in our lives.  Life doesn’t happen in minutes.  It happens in moments.  I began taking pictures fifteen months ago when I lost my childhood best friend and realized that in fourteen years, I had less than ten pictures of him.  Those moments, like that “perfect snow” crystalized and became memories.   But it shouldn’t take the loss of a loved one to realize that, because by then it’s too late.  In “Moments and Memories” I document a “perfect snow” day as it happens, capturing those instants so that when the time come, they are just as frozen as the air and snow that gave birth to them.

(There are over 50 photos in the final collection of this project but I have just included a few)

This project started out as a deep look on depression with technology.  I had the scenes planned out, the set put together, and I was simply waiting for these two to come home and be my models.  

When they came home we got talking and laughing because of how stressed we all were and how we simply wanted to just go out and play in the snow as it was a perfect snow day.  I couldn’t bring myself to get excited about my photography project and threw out that I wanted to go on a snow photograph adventure and that if they wanted to join they could.

This book is the adventured that followed that.  

But the special thing about these photos is that they reminded me why I love taking pictures and why I do it.  In the last 15 months I have taken more than 20,000 photos, and less than 1,000 of those were planned out photos that I staged and took with forethought.  As I took these I was reminded that I take photos to capture the soul and the memory, not the smile and perfection.  That’s not what makes photography special. 

And now, even when their footprints in the snow are covered or melted, and someday we all move on to different colleges, we still have the memory.  We still have that moment.

And that, it what photography is about.

My Adventure Buddy

I may or may not have fallen for my brothers complete charm and take way  too many pictures of him but my favorite thing to do is match the pictures to a quote that inspired them.  

These are some of my favorites.

Quote Reminder

Overcoming Fear in an Aussie Halloween

This week was pretty exciting since I went to a YSA camp weekend in Apollo Bay which is on the Great Ocean Road (an extremely famous coast line).  Friday started out pretty nice with it being really warm and sunny so Clare, Tim and I (who were carpooling) stopped and swam in the ocean for a few hours before heading to camp.  Once we got to camp we started setting up camp and getting the Scare Walk ready for when the others came. 

They don’t really do Halloween here, it’s more a light fad, so the Scare Walk was the extent of my Halloween activities. 

We started the walk at about 10:30 at night and we used a path that went from our camp site down to the beach.  We had people, me being one, who were strategically placed down the path to freak people out.  I got one girl really good.  :D  Once we got to the beach we then played capture the flag for a while before having to head back to camp since it was starting to rain.

The storm hit at about midnight.  And OH WOW.  It was so bad that a group of us huddled in the club house (a little shelter building at the camp site with a fire place.  It was open on one side so all it did was shelter from the rain, not the cold or wind) and played cards until 2:30 when we got in trouble.  It was massive amounts of fun though.  They had never heard of Slap Jack!  Don’t worry.  I converted them.  :D

The storm lasted all night long and after we had to get up and tie the tents down extra firmly since two blew off, our tent leaked and every time the wind blew water rained from the roof to our heads.  :D  I got about an hour and a half to two hours of sleep….

The next day we went kayaking down the river that we were camped on to the ocean which was EPIC.  I KAYAKED to the ocean.  :D  Once we made it to the surf we left our shoes and paddles on the shore and then we took the kayaks, they were sit on top, out to where the waves were and we would hop on them and ride them into shore like a body board. 

Well my motto right now is “overcoming fears” since it’s becoming a big problem in my life.  I get really fixated on little things that freak me out and I freeze up or start having panic attacks.  One of my biggest fears is being thrown into water or getting water on my face unexpectedly.  I’m fine with going in deep or jumping off the diving board or what not if I decide to do it.  However if I lose control of that I start to panic.  For example, the last time I went boating and they put me on a tube I started hyperventilating because it freaked me out that I didn’t know when I was going to get thrown. 

Anyway…. That was a long explanation to where this is going…  I was trying to face fears this weekend so they convinced me to do the kayak/body board thing which was freaking me out since the waves were throwing us all over the place.  Well I jumped on the kayak and got NAILED by this huge wave that threw me off the kayak, away from the kayak and my buddies, and into a massive pile of rocks that we didn’t know were there.  Needless to say that fear is still being worked on and now I have some epic bruises.  :D

Rose By Any Other Name

This weekend we went to the Werribee Mansion Park again for the Rose Garden opening which was BEAUTIFUL!  I have so many pictures of roses now!  :P

The best part though was Zach figured out how to smell the roses so he was walking around doing over exaggerated sniffs and then saying “ahh.”  Well he found this one rose that was just slightly taller than him that he wanted to sniff so he started pulling it down to his face to smell only to discover that it was full of rain water.  It splashed all over his face and nose and he freaked out!  The best part was though I just so happened to be trying to take a picture of him with the shutter button down on my phone so I caught the entire sequence on camera! 

It’s so weird to think that it is spring here.  My brain is wigging out whenever they start talking about doing a picnic or a beach day for Christmas and how we’ll be roasting in January when it’s over 100 degrees every day.  It’s going to be so fun but so weird!

Moonlit Sanctuary

Shawnie had her birthday here a few weeks ago which was absolutely amazing.  Since we can’t really take much home with us when we leave we are trying to focus holidays on gifts in the form of memories or experiences so for her birthday we went down onto the peninsula and spent a few days in a beach house, since it's spring here (a weird notion to think of November as spring). 

My favorite part of that trip though was on the way there we stopped at a place called “Moonlit Sanctuary.”  It was a place where they had all different kinds of Aussie animals that you could interact with.  I have officially hugged/cuddled a koala.  :D 

However the coolest thing was they had this area in the back where they just had domesticated kangaroos and wallabies wandering around free range and we were able to buy some food and hand feed them.  IT WAS SO COOL!!!

They love the forests here, which while impossible to explain or photograph are extremely beautiful, so you walk through this path in this forest and they are just everywhere sleeping on the sides of the path or following you.  Even Zach was able to hand feed a few. 


Since it’s spring it’s also baby season and at one point I had four wallabies (they are like mini kangaroos) eating out of my hands, three of which had baby joeys hanging out of their pouches!