Life is Beautiful

At the beginning of 2012 I decided to take a picture for each day of the year and putting it into a blog called Lamoureux Project 366. I have learned a lot about life and photography from this project already. The most valuable thing I have learned is life is beautiful. I can spend 30 minutes positioning someone into the perfect pose for a picture, but a candid picture of someone doing their thing or laughing at a joke is always more beautiful. I believe pictures are meant to capture a moment, to freeze a memory. Pictures are meant for looking at and remembering the exciting, happy time you had when it was taken.

It used to drive me nuts when my dad would just “take pictures”. He wouldn't ask us to pose and in fact he would get mad if we DID pose. My siblings and I quickly caught on to this “act like nothing's happening when Dad has the camera” but our friends and the youth at church (and everyone else my dad took pictures of) didn't quite understand the concept of “don't pose”. For a long time I didn't understand why he did that, but now I completely understand and have the same policy. Which would you rather have? Which would have more meaning? A picture of a group of people just smiling at the camera or a picture of that same group of people sawing, measuring, and drilling as they work on a wheelchair ramp for an elderly lady.

The pictures above are both of my son. The one on the left was me trying to get a picture of him in his overalls because I thought they looked cute on him. The one on the right was during one of the first days of spring that was nice enough to go outside and play. In this picture he is peeking through a hole in the fence and looking very surprised at what he saw. It is honestly one of my favorite pictures of my son.The stronger memories and all around better quality picture fall with the picture on the right. I'm not saying that posed pictures are bad (because they are not) I just think that sometimes we need to let the beauty of life happen and capture that moment in a picture rather than trying to make life seem more beautiful by changing it.

This isn't just about photography though. I think this applies to life in general. Sometimes God has something beautiful planned and if we just let go, let go of the worries, let go of our fears, let go of the unknown, that beautiful things happen in our lives. A lot of the time we think we can “fix” things in our life to make them better, to make them easier, but God's saying “Stop! Don't pose! Just let life happen! I have it all planned out and in the end, it's going to be the most beautiful masterpiece ever!”

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  " Jeremiah 29:11