Big Places

Back in mid-November, I had to make one last trip into the field for the Forest Service, back down to southern Utah. It was fitting to end the season in Pine Valley Recreation Area on the Dixie National Forest since that was my first overnighter this season, and now the last. Pine Valley is such a pretty little place, quiet, quaint, almost like the place that time forgot. It seems that way to me anyway. We made a long weekend of the trip and headed to Zion National Park for a couple days where we hiked, rode the shuttle bus, and ate a lot of pumpkin pie.

It wasn't until this past week that I finally posted the last of my trip photos on Flickr, but it was then that I realized how I photograph my husband, and how I have been all these years... from a distance and in big, big places. In the west, it's easy to photograph big places because that's what it is here. Big. I used to think it was a bad thing to photograph him this way, that I should be shooting more portrait-like, up-close photos, but I think these are portraits. They are who he is. He loves being active and being outside in these places. He loves his hiking shoes, his hats and beanies, his backpack, his snowshoes, his kayak, and I think he'll love seeing all these photos together.

I never set out to create a series of photos like this, it was completely unconscious, and now I hope to promptly forget that I noticed a theme so I can continue photographing him this way. I'm sure I will though because it's not like he's going to start smiling for the camera any time soon. I think he'd be perfectly fine if I never turned a lens on him again. But I will over and over again if I can catch him in quiet moments like these.