sometimes there are things in my head that are so purely what they are, that when I try to turn them into words, there are no words. I didn’t coin this phrase, but I could have. I looked it up to see to whom I should give credit, but believe it to be simply a well written line in a story. I heard it on a tv show and though I wasn’t paying attention to the show as it was just for company, the words caught my attention. I wished, immediately, that the person saying it was not an actor reading a script, but someone I knew. Someone I knew intimately. What understanding and pure synchronicity; what irony.
I think it would be coextensive to my emotional relationship to music and photography. I don’t know anymore about music than how it makes me feel, but … I understand it. And when the light shows her beauty, I feel nearly dizzy with the awesomeness of experiencing that single, perfect moment.
I feel that way most of the time. My brain isn’t wired the same way as most of the people I know. I can’t relate to them and they can’t relate to me. I have thoughts, images, ideas … but I have no clue how to explain something that consumes me. It isn’t lost on me how I am perceived and, for the most part, I don’t mind. But … every now and then, I would like to know that someone understands me. That without words, they just do.
I know. We all want that, right? I know. There are things I know, thoughts I think, emotions I feel and I know they are real, at least to me. I want someone else to know they are real; to know, not because they have knowledge of me, but because they feel it too. A kinship in a world of near-isolation, without fragmentation; a world that is frightening to some people. Frightening, at times, to me.
I am strong. I am grateful for that, for I wasn’t always. I am thankful for a mind of my own, for being different. Being different certainly had it’s challenges … God has a way, though, of refining those whose seek Him into what they are meant to be. While I still have a ways to go, I am leagues from where I began. I guess it is enough to know, that whether anyone else in all the world understands me or not, my Heavenly Father, who created this arbitrary mind, does.
Romans 12:2 ~ And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
So while the rest of the country was caught up in the celebration of freedom, I found myself caught up in the lives that live under the beauty of that freedom. I spent the Holiday weekend with a bunch of rough, cigarette smoking, tobacco chewing men, tough, driven women, brave 
kids of varying ages and a myriad of horses, mules and dogs. A small group they were, but nonetheless, an interesting bunch of people who held a common interest. On this particular weekend, they brought their campers, horse trailers, wagons, bridles, saddles, grills, tables and vittles and set up camp. In a flat piece of bottom land in Scott County, VA, what was just a bare place became a starting point for the week ahead. Each day, beginning on Independence Day, the riders planned to mount their horses or mules and the wagon masters to hook their equines to their wagons and take off for the day. There was friendship alongside friendly rivalry, but at the root, there was a love of something that bonded like glue. Photographs can only take me so far and without the intimate knowledge of how a group of people thrive together, the story stops at the image.
fortunate enough to have an invitation to this event and was, after a few hours, accepted as part of the gang. My main goal, secondary to photographing the happenings in and around the camp, was staying out of the way. I asked questions when there was something I didn’t know, and kept my eyes open for anything that could be used to document what these people were about. Though there was plenty of coming and going, I was drawn, not inexplicably, to the lined faces of the older men, the laughing smiles of the children and the
character of the animals. Shadows, shades, contrasts and light have always fascinated me and here, with these people, there was no shortage of real life happening right before my eyes. No one posed for photographs or changed their habits in the event that they might find themselves caught on film. They did what they had come to do and paid little mind to the gal with the camera around her neck. After three days trolling the bottom field in the hot sun, I had a “tog tat” around my neck in the outline of my camera strap and a collage of photographs that reminded 
me, as I developed the RAW files in Lightroom, why it is that I so love being a photographer. In each face, line, smile, grimace, frown and laugh, there was evidence of a Creator who is able to take the same features and make them different millions of times over. I am thankful for the opportunity to, for just a little while in a span of time, be a part of something that previously had been foreign to me. These people work hard, live hard and play hard. They have lives outside of the wagon train, but for this stretch of days, they come together to share what they love.
And this time, I was allowed to be a part of it. So to those who made these images possible by doing what they do and being what they are, I am grateful, for without a subject, be it human, animal or nature, a photographer is just a person with a gadget hanging around their neck. I don’t want to sit by as life happens around me and let lessons that I could have learned pass me by. I don’t want to regret not learning what makes people tick, what makes them laugh or cry and what makes them want to work so hard to accomplish something. I don’t want to let the colors in the world blind me to the brilliance of shadow and light. I want to be more than just a gadget rack.
A Photographer's Heart 