Happy Valentine's Day!

Charlie's first Valentines Day at just three monthes old! She is certainly a very sweet Valentine and we are glad that she is ours!

Charlie and Daddy

Charlie was her usual happy self this morning and I wanted to photograph her in Mark's arms while she was still in her good mood. People probably wonder why we always have a lot of photographs of people's hands whether its at weddings or portrait sessions. So here is my best attempt to tell you why hands are important to me...

I don't have many memories of my grandfather Victor, but as a small child I always remembered his hands which just absolutely seemed gigantic to me. He was six and a half feet tall and was a mason who worked with his hands his whole life. They were always rough from work, but they were also the most gentle hands too. He always held my small hand in his and would even lift me into the air with me sitting in the palm of one of his hands. For some reason his hands are forever etched into my memory. My father's own hands are very much the same in my memory and I'll never forget his either.

Years ago I had photographed the hands of a bridesmaid at a wedding holding her husband's hands. They never purchased the photograph and had only seen the photograph once. About a year after the photograph was taken she came back to the studio to tell me that her husband had died that week of an embolism right in their driveway. As she prepared for his funeral, she couldn't stop thinking about the photograph I had done of her holding her husband's hand. I talked with her at the studio and she told me that at the time she thought it was a odd picture. 'Why would anyone want a picture of just hands?' Now all of a sudden that photograph meant the world to her.

I hope Charlie has this same love of hands and always remembers her father's hands. The hands that are always their to support her, hold her and soothe her. It's one of those silly simple things in life that we tend to overlook, but when noticed can mean the world to you.