My google-fu falls off at night, apparently. I always recalled that shape as an almonzo, a yonic shape often framing Christ above the entrance of Cathedrals. Though I’m not seeing much about that particular word. There’s a post from last winter where I framed a freshly pregnant Abby in the shape. There’s something uniquely beautiful and human about it, though framing a newborn in it might be a bit on the nose.

Sometimes, maybe even most of the time I miss the grain of film photography. It’s a rare instance of missing it not for some silly notion of nostalgia or authenticity but because it simply looks better. If I could evoke that silver-crystal look with a digital sensor, I would. 


This is my favorite picture that I’ve taken. Part of that is because it’s of Abby and part of it is the composition and part of it is the grain. My primary goal with my photography these days is documentation. Taking truthful photographs of the earlydays of my parenthood feels more important than taking artistic or good pictures. Or perhaps more accurately, what makes a photograph good is different when the goal is truth and not, say, selling it, or impressing an academic.

The more I think about what is actually Good, the more I think about what is actually True. I’ve always felt that describing something as good felt half-baked and foolish. It doesn’t mean anything, or rather, its meaning is so desperately contextual as to be basically void without an essay to describe the setting, and who has time for that?

A photograph is not a 1:1 representation of time and light in the moment the lens bent light onto a piece of film. The camera, the man behind it, the processing, the print, even the frame and the things around the frame, the journey up to the frame, the heating in the house where it’s hung all of these things change how we look at a picture. 

Are these pictures of Roby true? 
I guess they’ve sort of got to be.