A little bit of musing, and another headshot

First, I am posting another headshot made during my week of headshots. My daughter at least cooperated with me this time, even if she did decide to give me the "I'm really mad at you" look. For me, that is pretty typical, she spends most of her time mad at me about something lately.

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Okay, a show of hands, who has read Shakespeare's seventeenth sonnet? Okay, who remembers it? Right, everyone but me it seems. Here is a link to it, so when I see re-read this a year from now I can visit it easily.

Why am I asking that question? This weekend I got word that a young lady was killed in accident. This has no relevance to me except I made some photographs of her when she was in high school. I thought of one picture, in particular. I made it during a school day with some ultra high speed black and white film. I never saw the picture apart from a contact sheet that I had made. I scanned the negative this weekend to really look at it. In another of Shakespeare's sonnets I think he mentions capturing a person in verse, is much better than catching them in a photograph (okay, he says painting but he meant photograph). I am tempted to agree with him. The picture is good, but when I look at it now it is clouded by my knowledge of the present. If I was able to read my words about the past, I may be able feel how I did then-- if only for a moment.

My take home message from the Bard, any time we create art around a real living breathing person -- we create a way to remember that person. Hopefully we create things their grandchildren can compare them to side by side (or even be compared side to side with their grandchildren!), but that is not always the case.