A Lost Tradition -- The Photo Album // A photographers view from a historical perspective

I have posted on my blog many times about my love of photography. I need hardly mention again of my great love for recording my life through pictures. The fact that I can try to capture the moment that is so fleeting in order to save a tangible piece of myself or my loved ones is a rare gift in the course of all human history. And today? We have an unlimited stock of photographs that sit hidden behind a computer or phone screen.

I always took great pride, weather that be good or bad, it is undoubtedly a fact that I take great pride in considering myself a bit old fashioned. Perhaps in one sense I am just being old fashioned and not very up to date but I think that a photo is not really completed without a print. I have just begun to print my photographs out and there is a lovely feeling to hold a photograph in your hand.

However, besides my nostalgic view on photography, I do not believe that I will always have all my digital photos safe and sound. They are just pixels on a screen, nothing real -- nothing you can hold, feel, smell. I have lost countless photos over the years on my computer due to computer crashes and transferring data, somehow pictures seem to get lost and are gone forever.

Besides I want to be a family historian to the best of my ability. I want to have a tangible record I can hold in my hands and tell my grand kids one day all about the stories behind my pictures. I want to be old and still remember how I looked on my 22nd birthday. I want to go back and have all the little pictures of my nieces and nephews throughout their growing years. I want to be able to pull out an album from a given year and have the memories flash back into my mind as I look at the prints. I want to be able to relive in my mind all the laughter, and heartbreaks. I want to remember my story -- and the stories of each of my loved ones. I want to give a gift to my posterity, I want to let them look into my life and the ones close to me and see a story in it all.

Perhaps I am above all a story teller. And true stories with real people are the best kinds of stories after all. I want to leave something behind me perhaps. That's why I take pictures, that and art. That's why I write. To remember. To leave a record behind me that I may read and see when I would otherwise forget. Is it the fear of forgetting that pushes me to continue at it? I think that is a big part of the reason. I forget things so easily -- the little details especially. I want to remember it all. The way things looked, the way I felt, the friendships I formed, the ones I loved.

So saying, I am printing all of my main photographs out and organizing them by year. I am writing on the back of each photo with a brief description. Where it was taken, when it was taken, who is in the photo, maybe explaining what was going on at the time of the photo if greater context is needed.

This is my new years resolution. To be a better historian. To be a better preserver of the photographs I have been blessed with in taking. How are you preserving your photographs? Will future generations be able to access them, to see them, to understand them? What is your reason for taking photographs? ~Molly

Abby's Senior Portraits

Abby has such a big personality, it was really amazing to be able to take her pictures. She is super sweet and really nerdy. She loves music quiet passionately and Iron Man is always a good idea. She very talented and smart and beautiful. It was a lovely time to be able to take her portraits for her senior year.
~Molly

Consider This -- Thoughts from a Charlotte Mason Homeschool Graduate

It has been over three years since I graduated from Grace Academy, the little house that sits on the middle of Reed Ave; from without it seems just the average home, an old iron railing stands on the front of the cement ledge that forms a sort of porch just outside the front door whereon there is two steps that lead to the driveway. The driveway is now new cement soft to the touch of bare feet though it was not always like that. It used to be any child's worst enemy in the summer time when shoes were an inconvenience. Indeed that old broken asphalt used to embody the driveway and in a way it definitely built some character to the house and the sore feet of those who refused to wear shoes. Once inside the house though there was a different atmosphere altogether than the broken asphalt from without. It was a place of learning and growing, a sanctuary away from the world, and yet a place to take you worlds away, wherever you wanted to go -- whatever there was to learn and imagaine, a wide variatey was offered. A big world map graced our schoolroom wall above the old wooden desk where my mom, sister, and I sat. That table had a long story within in itself. I could tell of the countless hours I cried over my math studies, or how I struggled to learn how to read for years (and wasn't able to read much beyond the simple I can read book till I was ten years old), but that was not where my story ended. Indeed, I think that perhaps sometimes my mother might have worried if I would ever be able to read however the story of my education extends far beyond the boundaries of that little schoolroom.

Indeed, I was offered so wide and rich a curriculum how could I not but eagerly learn more? I craved what I learned, I developed relationships with a wide range of material. I was taught to study great paintings and narrate what I saw, I was shown great pieces of classical music, I learned from well written history and saw the courage or tyranny within the great figures from the past; I was shown to appreciate the natural world around me and learned to sketch plants in my nature journal, I was shown great poetry from many different poets and learned to appreciate poetry for it's own sake, I read living books about great mathematicians and scientists of the past and felt a sense of wonder -- an excitement at the wonder of God's creation and some of the fascinating design it held, I built a love for wonderful well written literature and I know nothing can satisfy my hunger for a good story quiet like a well written piece of literature.

I learned that I have much to learn. I know that I have been offered a piece of truth and art from some of the best minds but I know that with everything I learned there is a thousand more facets where I could take my education further still. I now understand that the way I was taught was teaching me not to know just truth and facts but I was learning how to learn. Learning how to teach myself, for nothing can be truly learned and really known unless one learns it for oneself. To be spoon fed on other people's notions on what you should be learning and taking away from the lesson is not true knowledge. One has to experience it as wholly as one can, and to be given a wide subject matter and space to connect things within ones own mind -- to draw one's own conclusions after having assimilated the information and thought through it fully in order to say, "yes, I understand, for I can explain it and give my opinion based on my well ordered thoughts upon the matter."

I recently read "Consider This" by Karen Glass. I know that I read it much too fast, and that I will re-read it and narrate if back, maybe in written form so as to more fully understand it, but nonetheless it helped me tremendously as a Charlotte Mason graduate to gather my many thoughts about my education. See, I always knew that the Charlotte Mason education based on true classical ideals was a very special and privileged way to have been educated. I knew it based upon how much I grew to appreciate my schooling, and how much I deeply thank God for having a mother who taught me in that fashion. I saw a sadness around me at my friends growing up who were not educated in the same way and I always felt a pity for them. To have never read the great children's classics, or have read good history books like Our Island Story, or to have studied the great paintings, or to have nature journaled. Even when I was very young, I knew something was missing, and I was unable to talk to them on the many subjects that I found interesting. I am not even talking about complicated areas of study I only mean that I found it sad that hardly any of my friends had read Treasure Island, or Men of Iron, or Kidnapped, or Ivanhoe. That they had not experienced what it was like to know Robinson Crusoe, or to have read Pilgrim's Progress. These were some of the gems that I was offered in my schooling. I was disgusted when I saw a great classic children's book that was abridged and dumbed down for the children. As if we were too simple minded to understand great thoughts and ideas from great books and what was even more saddening to me was the fact that I knew some children my age who had only ever read those abridged fake books.

Humility, Synthetic Thinking, and Virtue, where the three main areas that Karen Glass seemed to point to in her book. To be able to be taught is to have humility. For one has to admit that he does not know. Next Synthetic Thinking should take precedence far above analytical thinking. Synthetic thinking shows the whole picture, not the broken fragmented parts. It is within synthetic thinking that one finds the passion and yearning for more. Whereas analytical thinking takes the whole and breaks it down, pulling it apart from it's original beauty. Analytical thinking does have it's place, but Synthetic thinking should always take front row. And as far as Virtue goes isn't that the whole point of education? To make person's wise and virtuous -- not just smart. A computer is smart, but not wise. Knowledge and wisdom are not one and the same.

I feel that I barely know the very basics of Charlotte's method and classical education in general but I do know something of it and it is a very real peace of me that is embodied in my soul. It is something that adds to who I am as a person. I know I have so very much to learn but I am excited to learn more.

So ends my life as just a student and added to my ever learning process is the great hope that I may one day be able to teach children. That I may share my passion for everything I have learned that I may in some way help guide some child onto the path for a lifelong love of learning. If I were to hand even one child the great love for learning that I have received than I would be more than blessed. At least four years lay ahead of me before I will be even considered for that opportunity, but I pray that God would grow me farther still in this next season of my life. And who knows, maybe someday I will be indeed teaching at a Charlotte Mason school. Here's to new adventures and bright dreams and perseverance. To God be all the glory, Amen!

This is the Story of the Day that Natalie Gave Birth

What comes to mind when you think of labor? I think of strength, beauty, and pain. I have had the honor of being a part of three woman's birth stories now and every time I am just amazing by the experience. There is a strange sort of calmness that I witness amidst the pain and struggle. I love that between her contractions she still had time to smile and laugh. Little jokes and smiles are weaved in-between groans and grimaces filled with pain -- small moments of grace are found here. I have long sought out authentic raw moments to capture on film and these moments are some of the most true to life -- the most vulnerable to human emotions -- but they are also the most strong and powerful moments I have ever witnessed. God's design is an amazing thing, and the birth of a baby is breathtaking to witness.

I had to leave before her baby girl was born, but I am blessed that I was able to capture some moments during Natalie's labor. It was beautiful to witness.

On the Subject of History Books in Education

I believe that history textbooks are one of the worst and most heartless ways the modern education system has deprived the children. No adult wants to read something as dry and as boring as a middle school or high school textbook; at least, unless the adult has never read a true living history book. 

Disclaimer, I grew up on living non textbook history books. I also was introduced to true history textbooks during high school. I could not read past the first page of the text book without feeling rather insulted, and frustrated. Frustrated they they were giving no opinion -- that it was lifeless. That in the attempt to be non biased, they were teaching nothing worth while. That they meant nothing, taught nothing, and just filled up pages with meaningless text only separated by random pictures and maps -- the only interesting part of a text book. For indeed, the writing cannot stand on it's one two feet without the help of pictures, for it would be too unbearable for anyone to read in just plain text. After expressing my frustration to my mother, she agreed with me, and though it may have been easier to find just one history standardized text book, it was rather pointless and a waste of all our time. So back to the good non textbook history books I ran.

The great difference between a textbook and a living book is that the textbook is written in such a way as to relay numerous dates and names and events out in much of a similar way one would recite the times tables. Living books are written in an engaging manor, have depth to them. They use a good vocabulary, a good written style, and are timeless.

What is history, is the question we must beg to ask. Is it an assortment of dates and names, of people in cold photographs and paintings, of old maps and battlefields, kingdoms and countries? Is it not the story of real live human beings who lived and breathed the same air we breath. People who dreamed to become bigger than what was within societal norms perhaps? Is it not a thread of tightly wound stories of human lives across all of time? Can we not see things from the past and feel a stir in our own souls -- a sort of deep connection to them? An understanding, or a sympathy? Is it not the greatest tale ever told -- as our God holds it all together in His almighty plan? Is it not the tales from people whom we should do well to take heed of --  and people we should try to emulate? Is it not people who, ignorant in their times, fell prey to the tyrants? Is it not full of warnings? And finally, is it not what we will someday become?

We should give children wholesome books full of great ideas penned from great thinkers from the past, to paraphrase Charlotte Mason. Books that live on, that are passionate about what they teach. There is something majorly wrong when a great or even small event in history is described in a book in the same dry manor as one would ask to pass the butter or state the price of gas. Only adults who really want to learn about history very much at all will bare to swallow a dry textbook. How much less so a child? 

Children are very smart and very bright but when given a dumbed down lifeless book it stifles any thirst for knowledge. It mocks them to their face as it were and that only makes them irritated at it for it stifles the questions of why and how come? Instead, they study meaningless names and dates in order to pass a meaningless text. But for what? If the child does not care will he remember? And if there is no real meaning, or real questions that the child may come up with on his own in his own way of discovery, will it matter if he did remember? For to him he is just memorizing a fact without being any the wiser.