Sharon McKeeman Blog » Blog

Masthead header

Monthly Archives: July 2012

This is what all days are meant to be.

Taking pictures of Aaron’s last day of his five week Jr Lifeguard camp. Out on the sand in the grey with my David man. Cameras around our necks and the sun coming out.

Walking and making images together under the blue sky. Him making friends as always and swinging out over the sea. Swinging swinging flying and I play with my camera, try to catch a bit of what the moments actually are.

We watch Aaron catch waves and see his face so proud that we have seen and documented and this is why I am always looking through my lens, grabbing bits of our time and constructing a rough approximate of the life pounding through each second. I will share those images in the next post. And then there was quiet at home, coffee and tea, babies napping, Dad studying. I edit and revel in the silent moments, unspoken, solid, love. Back to the beach with just an iPhone to snatch the beauty. Sundrenched boys digging to timbucto and baby on a surfboard begging to be paddled out to sea. We wade waste deep round him and laugh – laugh and gaze spellbound at blond hair blowing. Towel dry and run across sand to hamburgers grilled and a potluck goodbye to lifeguard life til next summer. The families all file out to pavement and vehicles waiting and we run unanimous towards the days’ last fiery show, sunsetting pink and purple and boys dug even deeper in sand and ocean lapping. I’m always wondering and trying to find just the right formula to help me keep the life I never made. Life freely given and I want to trap it, make it follow my routine. My man, he settles me, reminds me all I can do is watch and thank and take in tiny pieces through my lens. He reminds me this is them learning God and knowing Him is all they will need. If they can see Him in the sunset then they can weather this heavy world. Driving home by moonlit waters to back porch fire and song and s’mores, our little tribe together is more than enough.

7-26-12 . 24-70mm at 28 . f/11-f/22 . sunny day . LR + VSCO

So recently I began meeting with Nate from The Image is Found for mentoring sessions every month or so. It’s an awesome experience and I’m learning SO much. This time he challenged me to start shooting wide angle. It’s a bit ridiculous that I haven’t done this yet and wasn’t even thinking about starting. What’s even sillier is how much panic and uncertainty I felt at the thought of shooting wide and closing down my aperture. Where I live is amazing and frustrating and our home and so not me – all at the same time… Let the edges and corners show? Clear out the pretty blur? How could I still show the loveliness I try to focus on in my life amidst all the crazy mess and circumstances beyond my control? This is my first attempt, just shooting in our backyard where I often do while the kids eat, inspect our garden and collect caterpillars. At first when I looked at these images in Lightroom I didn’t know what to do with them, they all seemed so stark and awkward but then I dived into editing with vsco, the process took over and I connected with our story in deeper ways. Here are just a few bits of all that happens in a few short minutes, eating breakfast . . .

Noticed that I was still taking his picture and decided he preferred not to have any paparazzi around while dining

And then he laughed at his clever joke

I’ve been making banana and zucchini bread every day and they don’t seem to mind

David often ponders the deep things of life – I love this about him

I asked him why he looked so sad. He said “Mom I’m not sad, this is just my sad happy face”

He’s not supposed to be on chairs cause he falls off them like it’s cool, but he wants to do everything the big boys do

Yeah that’s an owl guarding our tomato plants

He brought home a seed from school and grew this bean plant

zucchini

My Mom made him these snakeskin pattern pj pants and even she agrees they are hideous but he thinks they are fantastic

On the other side of that fence is a road, on the other side of the road is a wall, on the other side of the wall is a very loud train that the baby man is obsessed with. As soon as he hears it he jumps up and starts furiously signing and screaming “train” When we are out in town he gets to see it roar by and then he REALLY freaks out. Can’t wait to take him on it for his Bday!

Aaron is teaching his brother the fine art of bug collecting

Patience, good eyes and a ziploc bag are apparently all you need to be a good bug catcher. They spend countless hours in pursuit of rolly pollies, caterpillars and such. Once caught they feed caterpillars the leaves of whatever plant they found them on, watch them make their cocoons and emerge as butterflies or moths and fly away

A freshly found caterpillar

What can I say, I can’t get enough of his hair

Oatmeal with lots of brown sugar coaxed a happy happy face out of him

When Aaron decides he is done with the paparazzi he means it

And he normally convinces my cameral loving David to agree with him at least halfheartedly

Anyone notice a striking resemblance between my son and that scary looking creature on his shirt? Thanks again Mom for the lovely pj’s that he wears EVERY night

We had a quick draw contest to see if I could get one more shot without his hands over his face

He won. I lost. But that’s ok.

I’m getting a cheaper, lighter weight wide angle lens and I’m really excited to start shooting some of our crazy adventures away from the house with it. Also my eyes have started looking in a whole new way this week. I am so enamored with SoCal, it’s beauty and all it’s crazy subcultures. I really want to start taking some me time to go shoot some of it, so hopefully that will start showing up here too . . .

7-22-12 . 24-70mm at 24 . f7-11 . automatic focus . cloudy morning . LR + VSCO

I was drowning in children this week.

I breath in soft hair on their neck when I’m gasping for air. Meditate on curled eyelashes and button noses when the day presses heavy and the world swirls crazy.

I draw in close when there is too much mess to see straight. Toys everywhere, diapers full and my thoughts tangled. Draw in close, inhale their sweet scent of cinnamon, sun and sea breeze. Lost in their details I find an air pocket, a little shelter from the storm where all is well. The water drains from my eyes and I can see life is good good good and this is all that matters. Aaron’s curls of hair and the freckles on his nose, sweet David snuggles, and the top of my baby’s head smelling of cinnamon. Buried in his soft blond swirls, those golden strands move like heaven’s wind and feel like perfection. I bury myself in them, try to sink in so deep that I can loose all the frustrations and failures. Deep down where we can’t quite get to is that spark the poets and artists try to paint with brushes and words. We grasp at the undefinable and it floats away like smoke into the clouds. We sit down still, soak it in and our souls are filled. Filled with soft hair catching golden light fallen from the window. Soft hair on his little back growing strong and sand clinging to every bit of him.

He comes home from Jr Lifeguard camp each afternoon covered in sunscreen and sand, his eyes full of the ocean, his hair holding the sun. He comes home satisfied and tired, knowing he’s grown a bit more of a man. This confidence  let’s me draw near, him sitting by the window, covered in blanket, watching Princess Bride with his brothers. I learn his growing quiet strength with my lens, explore every curl and freckle and those deep blue eyes lit up with all that is Aaron. He sits, lets the blanket slip from his face and I turn and turn, taking it all in. A study in Aaron. College days in a roomful of easels bathed in the light from walls full of old windows, I fell in love with studies. Burly bearded professor wouldn’t let us take another step until we studied over and over, our lunch, our breakfast, office supplies, the contents of our backpack . . . always studying. We layed the objects out simple, forgot about their ordinariness and sketched until we found all the beauty they held, losing ourselves in the process.  Somehow the daily trudge from cooking breakfast to cleaning up dinner can hide all the miracle in this home. I tell myself a million times a day this is not ordinary, this is new life, incarnation, the miraculous running circles round me. But sometimes I’m too tired to hear even myself preach and I just have to draw quiet and study the details to come face to face with beauty again.

And this morning I process these images and set them in a template. My man makes french toast and fried eggs, laying it all out with orange juice for hungry mouths. They run silly with bubbles round tomato plants and check on seeds in the garden. Sometimes I’m scared I had him too soon, him growing inside me on our first anniversary. I’m scared I wasn’t ready, didn’t know enough, don’t have enough to give him, maybe never will . . . but I remind myself that no one else at any other time would have been Aaron and the fear subsides. I ran from art school right into marriage and motherhood, moving place to place, trying to find myself amidst the rushing stream of our lives. I would not be who I am without him, without each of them. I would have more time to myself, more money, a cleaner house but I would have no fiery curls to study, no big blue eyes to mirror my soul, no more of myself to share life with.

They settle in round the kitchen table, children with worksheets and readers and Dad with his stack of books. I curl in my chair by the window with my laptop, using old processes in new ways. The baby flies plastic helicopters to the living room and back while the teapot hums on the stove. Five souls, each of us learning this world in our own way. These are the moments when I know every puzzle piece fits and none of it has ever been up to me. The art is made. We settle in together and we study.

and here is a little video of our festivities this 4th of July!

on the 4th of July from sharon mckeeman on Vimeo.

I love  this song by Shooter Jennings and I blare it NONSTOP every July 4th. It’s the one constant amidst very differing Independence days we have share all over the country…

Each one has been amazing and just the perfect thing for that year. I love that they are all so different for us unlike, Christmases that normally stick very close to certain traditions.

I can remember each time I have been with him on the 4th of July. Before him I was scared of fireworks and didn’t really get what the big deal about this summer holiday was. After him the 4th day of July has always been epic and has included . . . sitting on his best friend’s parents front porch dodging bottle rockets as siblings waged an epic battle, sitting on the back of his Jeep watching a crappy firework show on the side of the road in a podunk town holding our screaming one year old, watching him incinerate the backyard of the first home we owned with his brothers and sisters and then filling his Mom’s backyard with so much smoke that the neighbors put an end to the fun, trying to fill in for him when he was deployed and doing the firework setting off duties myself bedecked in goggles with both our moms and our two toddlers watching, ice cream cakes pony rides and fireworks in the driveway pregnant in the southern heat of NC with our two little boys and next door neighbors, watching fireworks over the Pacific ocean from our backyard when we first got to Cali with Jeremiah in my tummy, spending a week in a beach cottage swimming surfing eating catching sea creatures having fires and smores and watching sunrises and sunsets and finishing off with an amazing firework display on the sand right in front of us, and this year of bike parades to the beach and back airplane flying grilling out with friends and biking back to the beach in the dark to watch the show over the water all by ourselves.

That’s a lot of red white and blue goodness. And none of it has yet topped the year he had just come home and we drove our two kiddos back to Indiana. We visited every spot that had our memories in it. And on the 4th of July we went to Ted’s mythic ranch and we rode horses and dirt bikes through fields and across his front yard. We ate good food with old friends round tables sprawled all over the grassy lawn. We drank cold beer and watched the firework show to end all firework shows go off right above our heads. And we ended the night, souls full, dancing with the teenagers to a country band on the front porch of his cabin and crashed for the night tucked up in his friend’s sister’s room in an attic. We drove back in the morning to pick up the remnants amidst tents, sleeping bags and still snoring merrymakers.

And we drove away full to the brim and overflowing, it was one of the more perfect moments we have known together. As we have moved around the country and had children our lives have necessarily taken on a different hue each year. Each year at the beginning of July we struggle through the decision wether to pine for that perfect moment in the past or make the most of the present moment, what it has to offer and what we can make of it. Each year we struggle a bit, but each year the present wins out and gives us it’s own beauty and at the end of the day we say that was a good 4th of July. Different, but really really good. I for one am glad that each one has been just as it is.

7-4-12 . 5D + 24-70mm .  LR + VSCO + Final Cut . learning video

and that’s how we crushed the 4th day in July during the year 2012.

Crushed it

with bike parades, a little video game playing and movie watching, funnel cakes and a picnic on the beach, flying and breaking and fixing our remote control airplane, watermelon corn on the cob hotdogs hamburgers and sundry other grilling out necessities with our friends, singing happy birthday to America round the ice cream flag cake, biking back to the beach in the dark to watch the fireworks over the water at our secret spot on the lagoon, ending with s’mores and guitar playing round the fire of course

Boom. Fun.

7-4-12 . 24-70mm . LR+VSCO . all kinds of light ALL day long . Video coming soon…

« Older posts