I need to come clean here: this isn’t a new picture. I took it a few years ago while I was waiting in a carpool line and I ran out of things to do. I happened to have my camera with me and I started playing around with motion and got this shot. I’ve always liked it, as far as self-portraits go. And I can be a hipster and say I took a selfie before it became ubiquitous. Ha!
I really like this picture, and I really like the challenge to somehow capture fleeting in a photograph. I love that my eyes are not moving here; they are focused on the moment, but the rest is in motion.
Isn’t that what happens when we get in the zone while we’re doing something we love? When I was a kid, I’d be playing so hard I wouldn’t remember to go in for lunch until my mom called me in, flustered and annoyed by the number of times she had to call for me. Later, playing basketball, I’d find my zone and time would both stand still and somehow zoom to the end of the fourth quarter.
As a young mother, I loved to rock my babies to sleep, and sometimes I’d feel like I was defying the laws of physics — the rocking chair would be moving back and forth, but my eyes would be locked on the face of the precious child in my arms, and time would stand still.
Those moments were fleeting, for sure, but they are also engraved in my mind’s eye…kind of like the picture.
