The Magical Trio {Fine Art Portrait Photographer Stories, Vancouver, WA}
I was in a green tulle skirt that I hadn’t yet dared to wear outside the house (too fanciful and daring), music blaring, 2 year old daughter in my arms, twirling and dancing without a care in the world.
This was the moment.
This was when my world changed.
The moment, and then later, the image.
The image turned memory-cemented which I captured by propping my canon 6D camera on some clutter laying around the house on an interval timer taking one image every 3 seconds while we danced together.
I didn’t know my world had shifted in that moment, but I can see it so clearly now.
And it was movement, music, and connection that formed the magical trio. It was very early on in my discovery of photography. I was slowly, every so slowly, transitioning out of my employment as a Graphic Designer to stay home full time while my kids little. I was determined to absorb every little good thing about the phase when my kids were little because everyone told me it would go by so fast. So, with those desires in mind, I set up my camera, played with my daughter, put on music and we danced and twirled. We were *connecting* together emotionally, we were *moving* physically in our own bodies and listening to the *music* which enticed us to movement. We were living, and breathing, and being, without a care for beauty, in our bodies, in the moment.
What else is there to life than to feel truly alive in your mind, body, spirit, and soul.
And how much more to have a visual representation that cements it forever.
It lasted as long as the length of the song; short and fleeting. But the moment was cemented forever with the combination of the captured image and the power of the moment.
I am convinced, that if I am to create art at all, for me, it will always be using the magical trio of movement, music, and connection.
The problem is that our culture values girls and women based on our beauty. It doesn’t matter if it’s beauty measured by how much skin we’re showing, or if it’s our beauty measured by what’s “on the inside.” Both are focused on our body and how much skin is or isn’t visible. It is an obsession with beauty and which spills into objectification. I call it the beauty demand.
