What’s a picture worth? A thousand words? Perhaps. When I try to answer that question, I’m at a loss for knowing how to put a value on my photographs. Monetarily, they are worthless, but to the heart they are priceless. They offer a window into my life and the lives of significant others. There are untold memories locked in each one.
In younger days when life was more in the future than in the past, I didn’t appreciate the value of taking pictures; and I wasn’t at all interested in the mechanics of cameras. But, as we know, things change; my thoughts today are different. The passage of time and lessons learned in the classroom of living have been master teachers in so many ways. I am now grateful for the older adults who pointed the Kodak and snapped at every family gathering and special occasion.
My experience in the world of photography began when my late husband gave me a present a few months before we began a life at sea. It wasn’t a beautifully wrapped gift in a tiny little box. No, it was a camera, and it wasn’t even wrapped. Maybe I was disappointed. I don’t remember. What I do remember was an almost immediate fascination with capturing that perfect shot and subsequently taking thousands of pictures of the sights we saw during the twelve years we were boaters. I had discovered a new way of looking at the world.
We spent the winters either in the Florida Keys or making trips across the Gulf Stream to explore the Bahamian islands. I saw and recorded photographically God’s creation everywhere—in golden pink sunsets; in similar but softer sunrises; in seashells brought ashore by tides operating according to God’s time; in starfish lying ever so still in the crystal clear turquoise waters; in conchs with shells proudly showing an unmatched coral color leading the way into their mysterious spiral; in the birds of the air—sea gulls, pelicans, herons, egrets, ibis, sandpipers, cormorants—watching over God’s waters; in iguanas on the uninhabited Bahamian island named Allan’s Cay; in Spanish mackerel we caught at anchor in Florida Bay; in dolphins that followed along beside our boat, playfully swimming in the wake; in flying fish signaling the way to the big catch; in dark ominous skies that brought uncomfortable, and sometimes scary, thunderstorms; and in smiling faces of nameless strangers we met along the way who silently extended to us the kindness and goodness of God’s spirit.
I recorded times with friends—gathered on the aft deck for happy hour; sharing a “catch of the day” cookout; bringing in the big one while fishing in the tongue of the ocean near Chub Cay; and exploring uninhabited Allen’s Pensacola Cay that was home to a military base during World War II. Those memories and so many others from Florida and the Bahamian world tell part of the story of our life aboard the Sunshine II, a seaworthy forty-three foot trawler that was our home on the ever changing water.
Our travels on the eastern seaboard during the spring and summer months comprised the other chapters of our boating days and nights and gave us, in part, an immersion in American history. We saw and I took countless images of the places where America began as we travelled from Key West to Bar Harbor, Maine. Our democracy’s past became real along the Potomac and in the Chesapeake Bay. We visited Mount Vernon and stayed in Washington DC for two weeks at Gangplank Marina going to the sites in our historic capital. From the Chesapeake, we had water access to Boston, Plymouth, Baltimore, Jamestown, and other smaller historic sites.
The subtle, yet distinct, geographic changes that existed as we moved from one state to another can be seen in many of the photos. Climate differences—from early winter in Maine to perpetual summer in Florida—provided background settings for most of the scenes.
After the boating season of our lives ended, I have continued to travel; and I have been privileged to see and experience more of God’s world. My trusted camera, updated from the original, is always with me, making images of sites from far away places across the globe.
I am not a note taker or one who journals when I travel, but I compensate for the written word with my camera. While I don’t make movies, I almost do because I take a snapshot with every changing scene. Once home, I’ve never been good at deleting a single frame, leaving me with far too many similar ones. Each, however, has a unique feature that takes me back to the time I was there; and I relive the experience: the weather, the unknown people in the background, the sound of a strange language.
I save written materials passed out by tour guides or picked up along the way, and I keep the cruise news/announcements. These pieces, along with my photographs, provide the elements for making photo-journals when I get home. I sometimes think I get as much out of reliving and remembering as I do the actual moments. I often learn after the fact when I research sites or places in the scenes. I can stay with a memory for as long as I want and return to it whenever I choose—a peaceful contrast to the fast paced actual happening.
I have often thought that someday my treasures will be discarded. No one will know the characters or the stories locked in my captured scenes. I must admit that tossing away a lifetime was once a painful thought, but I now realize and accept that my memories are simply mine and no one else’s. The joy I get from looking at them and recalling part of my life’s story is their worth and, perhaps, somehow justifies the hours spent in creating countless volumes. To think or wonder what will happen to them takes away the joy of recalling God-given experiences.
I’ve looked at old family albums and wondered who and where the people were; and, in times of “going through another’s things” with no one alive knowing anything about the characters or the places, I’ve helped dispose of them. That’s the cycle of life spoken to in Ecclesiastes (3:2): “A time to keep and a time to throw away.”
I didn’t get a pretty little box with a beautiful bauble inside. I got something far more valuable, a camera that captured singular moments—those that never were before and never will be again. It was a priceless gift.
