My mom, Linda Lawrence liked to take pictures. She was good at capturing her boys together or alone, contemplative or joyful. The really good ones, she would blow up to an 8×10 and frame.

Linda had a Minolta XD-11 and she taught me how to use it.

I loved advancing the film after I took a picture. The sound matched the feel, which I thought was awesome. Heavy cool metal in my small hands; a big responsibility paired with the magic it produced had me hooked from first use.

In my notebook, I logged how I shot the nearby nature preserve of Harms Woods at 200 with f5, then again at f5.6, then again at 125 f.6, and so on. Later, when I developed the film, I would know how to shoot that scene, with that lighting, that camera, that film, and that moment, flawlessly. (Or at least that was the idea.)

She gave me the XD when she upgraded to the Minolta Maxxum 7000. Her new camera had an LCD screen, and a fully automatic setting – I thought it was a stunning machine and knew it was not to be trifled with, mostly because it was all black and had an LCD screen.

She always shot in manual mode – and made me do the same.

I was always too nervous about dropping the camera to get the focus right – as you can see from above. I rarely thought about composition. (Why, oh why did this beautiful lady need all that head room? She looks like she is sinking!) In the early days, I felt the pressure of having to get the shot right the first or second time, or else I wouldn’t be able to at all.

My mom was a perfectionist. She curated the photos she took for our photo albums with a heavy hand, teaching me to be frugal with what we decide to commemorate. Her meticulously kept photo albums were the final touch to her artwork, though she never said that she was an artist. But to me, she always was. Linda was a designer, a writer, and took all those amazing photos. She worked with artists, and had beautiful artwork all around the house.

Yesterday, while driving Elouise to Sunday school, she told me that when she grows up, she is going to be really good at Instagram, and I believe she will.

Together, we look through my Instagram feed and she double taps the photos she likes (♥)and scrolls past the ones she does not. We talk about what she does and does not like in these photos. I think this is teaching her discernment and engagement. Sometimes, Elouise asks me to make a comment in a photo and tells to me what she would like to say to the photographer. Then a couple of minutes later, a reply comes in. I read it to Elouise and her face lights up.

She gets that she has just made a connection with the person that took the photo that she just liked.

These are the first photo’s Elouise has ever taken, they are shot with an iPhone 4s.

What is most captivating about these photos to me is her intent on capturing the bits of her day, from her perspective.

Sometimes, there is all kinds of stuff around the things that she sees most important, but that it doesn’t matter – she goes for the shot anyway. She is isolating one thing, either on it’s own or in it’s environment and elevating it to the status of “subject”, whether it’s a jar of honey, a helmut, or her brother.

She is an artist, she said so herself one day. Words, I would love to utter so confidently.

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