You never know who you can count on until something happens and they all appear out of nowhere, bringing food, hugs, and comfort to help you through that initial shock phase. Family, friends, young and old, arrive with whatever you need to get through the day. It almost feels like having a pit crew always ready to jump into action when you need them. That is the connection you have built, either through blood and family or through years of friendship, shared experiences, and camaraderie. When something happens, those connections can pull people toward you without you even having to ask.
I didn’t really understand how strong some of those connections were until I needed them.
There is something interesting about connection. You don’t necessarily notice it while you’re building it. It happens through years of conversations, shared experiences, arguments, celebrations, stupid jokes, difficult times, and all of the ordinary stuff that happens between people. Then one day something happens and you realize that all of those little moments added up to something much bigger.
Photography also gives me a way to connect with people. I develop relationships with my clients, sometimes in a matter of minutes and sometimes over many years. Then I get to capture their connection permanently. That is really what the job entails: capturing that connection with a moment, with a person, with the people around them, and with everything visible in the frame.
A photograph can show two people standing next to each other, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are connected. You can usually see the difference. A look, a smile, a hand on someone’s shoulder, the way someone leans toward another person. Those little things tell a story that has nothing to do with the camera.
I’ve probably taken thousands of photographs over the years where the most important thing in the picture wasn’t what I was photographing. It was the relationship between the things I was photographing.
I have also lost some connection with who I was as a child, a teenager, and a young parent. I can see it in my tendency to want to solve things instead of experiencing them. Not like the “No, let the kid put the fork in the wall socket so they’ll learn” kind of experience, but actually sitting back and experiencing life instead of always trying to solve or plan for it.
I’ve noticed that I can be sitting somewhere perfectly comfortable, having a good time, and still have part of my brain working on something completely unrelated. What needs to be done tomorrow? Is there something I forgot? Should I be doing something more productive? It’s almost like my brain doesn’t understand that sometimes there isn’t anything that needs fixing.
Maybe that’s another kind of connection I need to pay attention to: being connected to the moment I’m actually in.
There are times when I catch myself doing it and have to remind myself to stop. Look around. Listen to the conversation. Pay attention to the person sitting next to me. Notice where I am instead of thinking about where I’m supposed to be next.
That sounds simple, but it isn’t always easy.
I think connection is something we build without realizing we’re building it. A friendship becomes important because of hundreds of small interactions. A family becomes a family through all of the ordinary days that nobody thinks will matter later. A photograph becomes meaningful because of what was happening when the shutter clicked.
Maybe that’s why connection is so easy to overlook. We tend to notice it most when something reminds us how much it matters.
And sometimes that reminder is as simple as looking across the table at someone you enjoy being around and realizing that, for once, you’re not thinking about what comes next.
You’re just there.