Today is a special day. It’s my brother’s birthday and the day that this special young lady, his daughter Alyssa, leaves home and heads off to college. Where has the time gone?
I was talking to my brother last night about how it feels like it was just yesterday she was born. That memory is so vivid. All the events of her life are so clear in our minds that it’s hard to believe that 18 years has flown by. I feel his excitement, his trepidation and his heartache as I prepare to send my own daughter off to college next week. It’s a day that I know isn’t going to be easy. It’s hard to even write those words without getting a lump in my throat…
My brother shared with me the very special gift Alyssa gave him yesterday. She took an old photo of the two of them playing on a swing when she was just a toddler and made a beautiful artistic rendering of the photo to mark that memory. If that doesn’t make a grown man cry like a baby, I don’t know what does.
For me, photos mark time. I think that’s why I’m a photographer. The simple act of taking a photo has the power to freeze a split second of time and forever burn that memory into our minds. For the hundreds of thousands of photos I’ve taken over the years, I can immediately be transported back to that exact moment I clicked the shutter in each and every single image. That’s powerful.
To mark this occasion, I wanted to share a few of my favorite images from Alyssa’s senior portrait photo shoot last year. I love you Alyssa and couldn’t be more proud of you and excited for this next chapter of your life.
