Ever since I was 10 years old and I got my first camera (Kodak Disc Film Camera), I have enjoyed capturing my family and friends on film. Eventually, my interest in photography turned into a passion and love that has led to me opening up my photography studio. I truly feel as though photography is vital to us as a society, and important to us as individuals. We all have treasured images of love ones from when we were kids that we love to look at. In running my photography business, I sometimes get wrapped up in photographing other families and neglecting my own. I do make a conscious effort to get my kids in front of the camera for some more formal portraits every year, even though they sometimes do it begrudgingly. I even make sure that I set up the camera on a remote so that I can get into some of the pictures as well.
This past year I realized that I needed to get my parents to sit for some portraits for me. It took a little effort… my mother doesn’t like pictures of her because she doesn’t feel she has a natural smile for pictures. It took me over 40 years to realize that she smiles so often, but it’s always with my father at her side. So in the studio, I made sure to get them both together. Those are the images she liked the best. The last few years we’ve taken a few days to go to the beach as a family, including my parents on the vacation with my wife and I and our three kids. One night in Cape May last summer in 2019, I had my camera with me, and I saw my parents standing on the boardwalk… I gave them a quick prompt and they smiled for me… it was the last picture of the two of them together that I would ever take. My mother would be gone by the end of the year. She went from being extremely active, playing soccer and basketball with my kids, going on roller coasters with them… to being brought down by an illness we’re still not sure what it was. She had fought cancer for 10 years and survived… she was the strongest person that I have ever known, but eventually, there’s a fight that is too much for any of us to win.
So the end of 2019 was particularly difficult for me and my family. When my wife and I settled on a place to live, we were deliberate in finding a house within 15 minutes of both of our parents. Our family and our parents have always been a big part of our every day lives. Now I have all the memories of my time with my mother, all the stories of our adventures… and I’ve got the pictures of her to share. I’m so glad I pushed them for the two pictures I took of my parents. The pictures of her life have helped me cope with losing her. I’ve got a ton of cell phone pictures of her, but they don’t at all compare to portraits I took with my camera. Those portraits are absolutely important. I wanted to share those two images here, along with a video I made a few years ago for my mother, Flor Marina Astudillo Kaplan.
Thanks so much for reading… hopefully that explains partially why I haven’t been active with blog posts or social media posts at all… it’s been rough, and I was just feeling about back on my feet when COVID-19 came on the scene and shut everything down. I’ll be back to more posts soon, and I promise they’ll be more upbeat.
-Ryan.
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