I spend a good deal of my time looking for unguarded moments. Even without a camera in hand I can be content for ridiculously long periods of time simply observing people, waiting patiently for some glimmer of familiar vulnerability that I may relate to, and forever searching for signs of quiet thoughtfulness and genuine connection.

I created this online journal over 3 years ago to be an oasis of unguarded moments for myself and like-minded others. In retrospect I should have set it up as an anonymous photoblog, and honestly can’t remember what my logic was for not doing so, since I knew all along I didn’t necessarily want this to be for client viewing. For more than a year now I’ve gone back and forth about the fate of lightheaded, ignoring it all together for long periods and then impulsively returning again, just as lovers in the process of breaking up are prone to do. But for many varied and compelling reasons, I believe the time has come for us to finally call it quits.

I’ve considered and dismissed the alternatives: a studio photoblog (boring and obligation driven), starting a new anonymous photoblog (feels like a betrayal to lightheaded and strangely dishonest, not to mention I really don‘t feel up to starting over again), or somehow modifying lightheaded (less vulnerable/more guarded…..I don’t think so).

So just as Neil Sedaka sang many years ago, “breaking up is hard to do”, this is hard. A part of me doesn’t want to let go of that which I’ve poured so much of myself into, but I sense I’m becoming more guarded here and don’t want that either. I would have imagined that when the day came to take lightheaded offline I’d be filled with poignant words of what this experience has meant to me, but instead I feel somberly quiet and empty. I am though, deeply appreciative of all the people who’ve encouraged me with this endeavor over the last several years.

It’s been good.

 

With much love and gratitude,

~Cynthia

 
Hancock is the resident rooster of the downtown area where my studio is located. He’s been lovingly adopted by all the local merchants, but mostly makes his home in the courtyard dining area of the restaurant “Two Blondes and a Shrimp“, just across the town square from me. It makes me smile to hear his crowing as I sweep the front area of my studio in the morning, and regularly reminds me of what a quirky little town I’ve landed in.

It’s a town that just months ago I would have adamantly said I’d never open a studio. In fact in early April when a photographer who knew I was considering studio space mentioned I should take a look at downtown Sanford, I quickly replied, “no thanks, Sanford has image problems and it’s too far from most of my existing clients anyway”.

Funny thing is, I’ve always been curiously drawn to this town, and would periodically visit for photo excursions years before I had any notions of becoming a photographer. I thought perhaps because it’s the town my mother grew up in, and where I came often as a child to visit my grandparents, or that the sharp contrast of people and lifestyles intrigued me, so different from where I grew up. But I never could adequately explain what it was that brought me back.

Ironically I was born here, just a few short blocks from my current studio location. So though I spent my childhood 1500 miles away, being here now does feel a bit like coming full circle in a way I never at all expected. It was yesterday, as I was photographing this child and we came upon Hancock, as well as a friendly old timer who shared some food with the rooster and stories with my clients and I, that I finally got what it is about this place that calls me. It’s a town of storytellers; rich with historians, artists, musicians, and simple people whose ancestors resided here generations ago and never left. All of them eager to share their personal renditions of life in this quaint and often troubled town on the water. Even the old brick streets and crumbling buildings seem to yearn for those who will pause long enough to listen to their tales.

I find it perfectly poetic that I’m now photographing on the very sidewalks and streets my mother traveled on daily in her youth. But even more serendipitous is it that I find myself in the middle of this place I never had any desire to be, only to discover it feels oddly like home.

~Cynthia

 
I’ve had a lot of maternity shoots lately, most of them being in studio, and the practice has been to keep from feeling redundant with these. I was hoping we’d be able to shoot outdoors for at least a portion of this session the other evening, but after heading out and being confronted with oppressive mugginess and dark dreary skies we gave up on the idea and finished back in the studio.

I was trying to come up with something I hadn’t done prior when I announced, “I’ve got it, let’s line up the dark line on your belly with the line separating the two wall finishes!” I had a feeling the mom-to-be wasn’t feeling the love for either me or my dumb idea, but she agreed, because, well, I’m supposed to be the creative one. However when I continued asking her to move a smidge this way, and then that, so as to get everything to line up perfectly, she could no longer hide her annoyance with the whole line concept of this portrait. So I quickly moved on to something else.

Truthfully both she and her husband were great fun as subjects and I’m hoping will love the other, more successful images from the shoot.

~Cynthia