Two Years Ago, Today.

About four in the morning, two years ago today, I made this photograph. Brigid Niamh Lynch, just a few minutes old, weighing 3,11 kg. Ingrid had gone through labour like a hot wife through butter, and the doctor that delivered our daughter didn't even have time to get into her scrubs. I was having a hell of a time shooting the birth; I'd gone old school a few months before, and was only using Canon T-90's, with old FD lenses... all manual. We were short a nurse, which means I was filling in as a brace of sorts for Ingrid, leaving me to shoot with one hand. Not easy, trying to fix focus with the little finger of your right hand, while having all the bones broken in your left. To make it worse, the nurse was shocked that I was shooting the birth (what century are we living in?) and then had a heart attack when both the doctor and my wife screamed at her "It's what he does!"

So today, we picked her up early from the nursery school, and spent some time with her ourselves... we'd planned a trip to the zoo, but the weather was looking a bit dodgy. Great thing is, when you're two years old, chock full of sugar and wearing a paper verjaarsdag crown that your teacher made, a "pink" milkshake is still a great substitute for a trip to the heffalumps. While at the Wimpy, her malt shoppe of choice, I got to make this next photograph: three generations of Lynch females, my Mom on the left. On Sunday, there'll be a family get together, and then the matriach of the family will be in attendence, the last of my grandparents, Isabel Lynch... otherwise know as Oumie. It's moments like this, that make me realise how fast time passes. It's a terrible cliche, but it does, and being a photographer seems to be the only means I have of understanding this... or even coping.

As it is, we were talking about what age I was when I first had a large party on my birthday... turns out I was three. My Mom told me how my Da had made a cake, a helicopter nogal; I must have been obsessed with them even then. I remembered it being chocolate, with brown icing and white piping. Ingrid was impressed that my memory went that far back, but what I actually remembered was the family album... never knock the value of a happy snap! They sometimes outweigh all the magazine and bookcovers in terms of personal value.

Later.