the next 50 needs more photo assignments
Me, making a friend in Kisumu, Kenya, July 2011. Photo by the incomparable Morgana Wingard. This photograph remains my favourite ever taken of me.
It's July, which is my birth month -- and this year is a big one, I'm turning 50! Because I swim in a gene pool shared by long livers (three of my grandparents lived past 95, and one lived until 102!), I figure I'm only halfway done. So to celebrate my birthday, I've decided that for every day for the first two weeks of this month, I'm going to share images and words representing what I hope the next 50 years will have more of. Time to say it and claim it, by gum. And maybe, if what I say resonates with you, you'll be inspired to get more of these things for your next 50 years, too.
There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.
~ Robert Frank
One of the joys of my life is getting an assignment to travel somewhere unfamiliar, and tell the story of what I see through my camera lens. There is something about taking a scene that feels completely foreign (whether it's a small village in Kenya, like in Morgana's shot above, or a vineyard in California,) and shooting it in a way that it feels relatable. There's something about the translation that I love.
I haven't gone on a photo assignment since my Malawi trip in 2015, and I'm really missing the experience. So here's hoping that there are more to come in the next 50 years. Because capturing "the humanity of the moment" is what I live for.
Soundtrack: Kodachrome by Paul Simon. "I got a Nikon camera, I love to take a photograph ..."
Also for my birthday, I thought I'd give a nice, deep discount to one of my most popular online courses, GLOW: a 21-day ecourse for claiming your light! So if you'd like to get more light in your life, enter coupon code WATCHMEGLOW for 30% off the course. It really is a great course: one participant said she was so happy to rediscover "how blessed I am in my life"; another said, "GLOW came into my life at the perfect time. It is slowly changing my mental state and I have been focusing on the positives for the first time in ages." So join me. It's the perfect self-care for the summer.