Today my boys and I spent about 3 hours on a mountain of dirt. There’s a construction site near our house where a new subdivision has been built over the past year and a half. At the entrance to the subdivision, there is the big mountain of dirt that seems to come with all new subdivisions. Behind the mountain of dirt, is the place where they wash off all of the cement mixers. It’s an amazing place. The cement mixer washing area is sort of like walking on the moon– or at least that’s what we pretend. There are small hills of concrete surrounded by smooth surfaces that look like wet flows of concrete. Once when we walked there, it was actually wet and Isaac and I wrote our names in the surface to claim the space as our own. The past two trips to the site, we have focused our attentions on the big mountain of dirt. Climbing it, attacking it, throwing dirt clods at it or down it. There is a big puddle close to the base and it’s fun to see if you can get throw a clod far enough to land in it.

Today when we arrived, the boys went to the top of one section and I sat off at a distance on another part. It felt like the kind of place where I should be invisible and they should get to do anything they want, imagine anything they want without me being there to interfere. I was bummed because I had forgotten my camera on this excursion. So instead of taking pictures, I watched and listened. I absorbed the experience and tried to understand it at its core… so that when I did have a camera with me next time, I might be able to tell the story in one frame.

As luck would have it, it was a warm day today and we were getting hot and the boys wished they had brought along their shovel. We agreed to walk back home, get camera, water, shovel and change into short sleeves and drive back. What followed was 2 full hours of dirt digging, throwing, attacking, imagination fun. They worked hard. I did my best to capture it.

I love it when I get to work with a family year after year.  We build a relationship over time that makes the sessions more and more meaningful. I’ve shared a lot of special moments and experiences with this particular family including the birth of their third child and the baptisms of all three children.  This year we accomplished quite a lot within one short hour!  One cool thing about Orr Street Studios is there is so much space.  I was able to set out a tub of legos and giant coloring paper with a box of crayons and stickers to keep everyone occupied while we did individual images of everyone.  Every year we do our headstands to get everyone to smile, but invariably, it’s the serious images that I come back to over and over.

So, I recently just stopped blogging (again). I know exactly what happened, and so today I’m hoping that by just putting this little ditty together for you, I will get over that hump and get back into blogging regularly (again). Recently I had the opportunity to do a session in my studio with a woman who is 101 years old. She was willing to sit nude for me for an hour and tell me stories while I photographed her. The experience had such an impact on me, I haven’t been able to really talk about it here or show any of the work here on my blog… yet.

Soon. I hope.

I think for me, blogging is such a practice of self expression and the willingness to put everything out there for the world to read just hasn’t been there for me since my session with the 101 year old. I know some of the pieces are strong, and I plan to exhibit more of them. (You can see one of them on display in the members’ show up right now at Orr Street Studios)

On Monday I met again with my mentor, Gloria Baker Feinstein) in Kansas City. This time I wasn’t nearly as scared and we got straight to work looking at images. I learned a lot and I’d like to just share three of the best pieces from the day.

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