Over the holiday, my mom pulled a small stack of black and white prints from her purse. The photos were a recent find, having been stowed away in a box at my grandma’s for decades.
This image is my mom at four years old with my uncle John and my grandfather, who has been gone for more than twenty years. I’ve heard of their trips to Colorado, but I’ve never seen them.
In this snapshot they were pulled over at a rest stop. My mom says they never ate at restaurants when they were on the road. There weren’t many out west anyway. They packed lunches, ate from the cooler. Sometimes Granddaddy would fish at the stops when there was water nearby, and mom and John would play until it was time to get back in the car.
I turned over the photo as my mom is telling me all of this.
“Plunka?” I asked.
“I didn’t even know that was on there!” She went on to tell me that they called Granddaddy’s old Plymouth Plunka. I’d have never known this small family history without this photo.
This image came to me at a time I’ve been thinking about my 2015 goals. One I’ve been kicking around is to up my photography game. Today I researched classes, one small step toward capturing better images. I want to understand all of these mysterious settings on my camera, the lighting, the technical stuff. I want to be able to capture moments like this one, the kind to unlock lost worlds, stories, feelings.
This post is part of Think Kit by SmallBox
Prompt: “One Small Step. Set your sights on the next year: what’s one step you can take to support a goal you have for 2015? Whether it requires a written plan, a list of supplies or ingredients, or even a flowchart: getting your plan down in words should help spur you into action.”