Weekly Photo Challenge: Letters

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Joanne Edith

This series of photographs is posted in response to the prompt “letters“.

Upon first glance, these two photos, are a welcome banner and a logo on a cap. For me, though, when I look at these photos, I am instantly transported to the mountains of Sheffield Massachusetts, where each summer I participate in joyous music making and spiritual renewal.

The “No Swimming Allowed!”. This photo brings me back to the Polynesian Village at Walt DisneyWorld Resort; remembering how, in decades past, we would allow our toddlers to splash and play in the warm waters of the Seven Seas Lagoon, and happily swim out to the raft located about 20 feet offshore. Sadly, for many reasons, that is no longer a viable (or healthy option). This simple sign means so much more to me than the words displayed.

The last two photos recall a time in the early eighties, when I was very sick with pneumonia and hospitalized for ten days. My father wrote a get-well poem for me, and even though I was a grown woman, mother of two, those simple words from my Father meant (and still mean) so much. I have kept that note hidden in a false book with a secret, carved-out inner compartment. Today my grandsons marvel at the secret compartment and the ‘treasures’ I keep there.

All of these photos speak more than the mere words on the sign, or the cap, or the paper on which they were written. To me they are personal and evocative of times in my life when I was happy, sad, moved to tears and otherwise emotionally engaged. Those emotions come flooding back when I look at these photos.

A stranger viewing these images would see the images, but I see and feel so much more -perhaps anecdotal proof that photography is so much more than reproducing an image through the use of light. Photography is the art of capturing moments in time; unique moments of light in a person’s life.