A Happy Place: The No More Bad Photos competition and your chance to win a Sony Cyber-shot HX20V camera
We have a winner! Thank you everyone for your wonderful comments and all your enthusiasm for this wonderful giveaway. I loved reading all your comments and recollections. Please check your emails to see if you have won.
Can you see us, happy and expectant and shoeless, in this grainy photo? It was taken at the beginning of a long day when we went fishing, some by trawler and others by ancient row-boat, chancing our luck that this would be the day the fish were biting. Later that evening, a sumptuous meal of freshly caught mackerel and whiting and jacket potatoes will be pulled from a campfire before us. We will eat like kings.
For one glorious week, everyone I love is gathered to us in Cornwall. We are a rollicking and raucous clan, some related by blood, others connected through enduring friendship. Three families who usually live in various parts of the country are together on holiday in what will soon be remembered as the hottest summer in living memory. It is 1976.
From L to R, my sister J, Jan, Mum, Sylvia, Eric, Phil, my sister N
There’s Uncle Eric, chipper and funny as always in front of the children, but privately complaining to his brother (my Dad) that his eyesight is a little wonky and he now has something called tunnel vision.
There’s Aunty Sylvia, a gentle soul if ever there was one, whom I’ve never heard raise her voice, laughing, shepherding her children, rolling her eyes at yet another transgression committed by her wilful boy.
There’s Phil, my favourite cousin in the world, just a year older than me and more like a brother. In the week he has stayed with us he has read me vampire stories in the dark and scared me witless. During the hot days he has wandered with me into our small town and taken to staring at every teenage girl who walks past, rating them purely on the size of their boobs.
And then there’s Aunty Heather, not related at all but my mother’s oldest and dearest friend, down with the girls from Berkshire in her battered pop-top Kombi camper, beatific in her fuzzy peach haired skull and radio-therapy wasted face. She has Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, has been fighting it for six years. Right now she is well, so she’s piled the girls into the camper, driven 300 miles on a whim to Cornwall and shown up on our doorstep without warning. The tiny three bedroom house, already crowded with our visiting cousins, somehow expands to fit in the others. Her two girls, Lynn and Jane, are the same age as me and my sister. We are the closest thing they have to cousins. When I think of our childhood holidays together – there were many – I don’t recall anything but laughter. It is joyous to see them again.
From L to R, me, Heather, Jane, Mum, Lynn (with her back to us)
Within a few hours, Heather has convinced all of us to head to Mevagissey to spend the following day at the beach. It’s her favourite camping spot in Cornwall and it’s where she and the girls are staying for the week. It is the first week of August, the weather is cloudless and hot and we kids are restless. It’s an irresistible offer.
My dad is an enthusiastic fisherman but hopelessly unlucky. He will invariably catch next to nothing but it never stops him from having a go. Fishing charters run out of Mevagissey harbour so he and Eric stump up the cost and take as many children as they can wrangle onto the boat for the day. As usual, Dad ignores the pain in his knee which is crumbling under early onset osteoarthritis, ever optimistic that this will be the day his luck changes. I chicken out – fishing charters are not my favourite pastime. My sisters go, so does Phil, his sister Jan and Jane and together they take a motley collection of rods and nets. It is Mum who takes the photo of them getting on the boat, her feet securely land-locked on the beach.
After the trawler chugs out of the harbour, Heather notices dinghies for hire, little wooden row boats with outboard motors and wooden rudders. She piles me and Lynn into a boat, commandeers the motor and putts out just beyond the harbour wall, then kills the motor and we bob on a sea so languid it’s like an enormous blue mattress. We dangle hand lines over the edge and within minutes start catching mackerel, which we can clearly see swimming beneath us.
In an hour we have caught more than a dozen fish.
The trawler comes back a few hours later and for once Dad is triumphant. In calm and clean waters they have hauled in so many mackerel and whiting that eventually they simply throw them back. It is an epic day. Dad is crowing.
Later that afternoon, my mother, who even then has a phobia of boats and who has refused to get in either one, makes her contribution by wrapping up whole potatoes in foil and encourages everyone to find driftwood. I don’t know if it is illegal to have a campfire on the beach – it may well be now – but it is her idea that we all eat around the fire.
While I had never forgotten this holiday I had not seen photos of it for over thirty years until Mum unearthed more than 1000 slides from the garage earlier this year. Dad had put them all away. Slides – do you remember slides? There is a whole ten-year stretch of our family’s life captured on slides, crucial years from when I was six to sixteen, all carefully stored away on a shelf. The ancient slide projector long since gone, Mum had no choice but to hold each one up to the light and decide which slide would be converted to digital and which would be left alone. She was looking for photos of Heather to send to the girls when she came across this mother lode. She showed me and in an instant I was fourteen again.
From L to R, Jan, Mum, sister, me, Phil, Sylvia, taken an hour before we started the bonfire
I look back on that summer and I think of it as a perfect time. Of course the photos don’t do it justice, how could they? For one thing, no photo of our evening meal or the campfire remains. At best, these photos are a fleeting impression of how golden and untroubled our lives were. We had our problems but they are not visible in these pictures.
When I remember my childhood, this glorious day remains a standout. That simple dinner of fish and potatoes remains one of the great food memories of my life. It was the company that made the meal taste so good, a perfect synergy of love and friendship and good weather and no cares in the world, in the hours before the incoming tide swept away the embers of the fire. These are some of the last shining hours we shared together.
Before life came roaring back in, obliterating everything we knew.
Before Eric was diagnosed just a few weeks later with a large brain tumour. It was promptly removed along with his pituitary gland but it was too late to save his optic nerve. Eric woke up to permanent blindness and was tipped into years of rehabilitation and unemployment.
Before Dad could no longer bear the pain in his knee and finally went into hospital just a couple of weeks after his brother’s operation. He returned two months later barely able to walk, his knee cap permanently removed by barbaric naval surgeons. He never had a pain-free day again. He was not yet 40.
Before the luminous Heather died a short six months later during an icy winter, leaving two abandoned girls to find their way, my mother sobbing into the phone for the loss of her friend.
Before Phil got caught skateboarding along the rollers in a local crematorium late one night. I know it shouldn’t but it still makes me laugh, even though we both mourned the loss of his dad in that place years later.
Before we migrated to Australia the following year – before Life got in the way and destroyed utterly that group of families and bonds we all thought would last forever.
This was our happy place.
And I had never thought to tell you any of this until the wonderful people at Sony sent me a brilliant little Cyber-shot DSC-HX20V camera to play with. They also wanted me to enter this competition, called No More Bad Photos, because they believe that there are always photos that ould stand to be re-taken. And while there are countless blurred photos of travel and friends and babies and parties and even camping trips in my collection, it’s this moment I would most like to recapture, with a wonderful camera that does justice to the colour and movement and brilliant energy of the people involved.
Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. Could it be replicated? No, not completely. For one thing, time has taken the older people, except for Mum and Aunty Sylvia, now in her eighties. In the blink of time’s eye the children are now the grownups in the picture. But we are all still in touch, with families of our own. We haven’t holidayed together since that summer but all have referred to it in separate conversations over the years. What would I do to bring us all together around another campfire on a Cornish beach?
Well, I’d start by hiring a charter boat and sending everyone out to catch our dinner. I’d stay behind and wrap potatoes in foil. I’d wait for the tide to go out to build a large bonfire in this, my first British summer in thirty-five years. I’d take great care to take as many photos (and, gloriously, HD movie footage) as possible, of the meal, of the people, of the laughter. No doubt my daughter would carefully supervise me to set the correct aperture, the right colour wash, the correct exposure just to be sure. We’d take advantage of the incredible 20x optical zoom lens (or more than 40x clear image zoom), of the more than 18 megapixels of hi-res images available to us, of HD movie images you can playback on your 3D TV, of face and smile detection, panorama settings and more downloadable editing options than I have ever dreamt of using.
I’d smooth down my hair then compose everyone in the group just so, just to make sure Phil isn’t being so ridiculously funny that he makes everyone laugh just when I’m taking the picture.
And I’d post the resulting photos in every social media forum we have between us, on this blog and Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and in all the places and spaces and groups we belong and everywhere we can think of like clouds and memory sticks and cyber time-capsules – and best of all, blown up as a huge family portrait and hung on Mum’s lounge room wall.
Just so we never lose sight of our happy place again.
To be in the running, please tell me about YOUR HAPPY PLACE that you would most like to re-capture using this beautiful little baby and how you would best use the camera.
Open to Australian residents only. Winner will be selected at random from the comments listed below. You can comment as often as you want.
Entries close 7pm EST, Sunday 24th June 2012.
I would love to capture the first pic of either of my daughters on the day they were born. I dont have any.
Iain
What about some up to date father and daughter pics? It’s not a substitute but every memory counts doesn’t it? xx
Yes it would but they dont talk to me and they live in NZ so its a little hard, but nice thoughts. Thanks
I would love to recapture the nice feast we had when my family and I went to eat at a Thai restaurant for my birthday. It was very fun, because it was our first time eating out for a family member’s birthday, and we were all excited because it was also our first time eating Thai food
The lights were dim, and I own a point-and-shoot camera, so every picture was blurry and grainy. Better pictures would’ve allowed me to capture the mood as well as the food.
I love taking pictures of food, and this, for me, would be the best use of the camera.
It could have been worse Tina, at least there was no red-eye! xx
My happy place has always remand the same over the years, it is in a kitchen (not always my own) on Good Friday morning toasting hot cross buns & making endless cups of tea. My (late) Dad taught me how to toast hot cross buns over hot coals in the wood stove when I was about 4yrs old. To this day I can still smell the sweetness of all the spices and the warmth of the toasted buns on Good Friday. And I still remember pouring tea from a teapot that never seemed to run dry. Yes it is a very happy place for me to go to.
I love how smells of food can evoke a time and place. Imagine what Proust could have written with the memory a hot cross bun and not a madeleine!
I would love a really good camera. I would love the opportunity to take some good quality family photos. My mum and aunt getting any younger so would love to get as many as I can of them now while they are still very active. I have a beautiful grandson and would love to catch these early years, I am the oldest of ten so have lots of brothers and sister that I would love to capture and their families. Bowen has the most beautiful scenery and beaches I would also love to capture. I hope, I hope, I hope.
I hope, I hope, i hope as well! Fingers crossed Lyn.
I am actually going to re-live my voyage to Australia by ship from Cape Town in 1971, by sailing back there in March next year! Even though I’m old and grey now, I would love to capture the voyage on film seeing that no-one in our family owned a camera back then!!
Now that’s a great reason, Jo. I would like to think good photos would capture the spirit of the occasion, as well as the scenery.
I would like to recapture my favourite pic of my four kids taken at Glenelg when they were 4, 7, 10 and 12. It was a day out for us, and one of the most favourite times I’ve enjoyed with them
I’d like to recapture my college graduation. We only had a non-digital Kodak KB10 at that time, which wasn’t very helpful in taking photos in the evening and at a distance. That’s the big occasion with the ugliest-quality of photos I’ve ever had, as far as I can remember. There were also lots of other important occasions that could use a much better camera, but that graduation was just the worst.
While we are in the spirit of graduation photos, my son has recently reminded me that I took some photos of his Year 6 formal, back in 2004 and I have never had the photos developed. Yes that’s right – they were the very last pics I ever took on film and the camera still remains at the bottom of a desk drawer only now there is NOWHERE I can get the film developed.
Mother of the Year, that’s me.
I cannot describe in words how much I love your post. Thank you for sharing these precious stories about your family and dear friends. My happy place is in Australia, at the beach. I’m far away from it now, but I will not give up on my dream to live there again.
Thank you Louisa. I hope we all have precious memories. How blessed we are to be so lucky.
What an incredible story – Sandra, I think your next book should be a memoir (with recipes of course), you have a beautiful writing style and, I’m sure, amazing stories and insights. No, I’m not sucking up for the prize (I know your random computer generated picker thingey isn’t reading this anyway!). I’m hardpressed to think of a happy place that I haven’t already captured on “film”, as all my happy places are since my 2 girls were born. But I have become very slack and just use the iPhone to photograph things these. WIth my firstborn I was diligent with a borrowed SLR and the photos are beautiful. The iPhone snaps are just that, snaps, and I would love to record all my daughters’ wonderful and “ordinary” moments on a proper camera to do them justice. They are growing up so fast.
x
A memoir with food is probably best left til the end of a very long life Anne, but I appreciate your good wishes. As for our children’s snaps, they grow up so fast don’t they?
Hi mine is a happy and sad moment. I would like the camera so my family can capture shots of all our family functions. A couple of years ago my son took, in shot and out of shot, about 30 pictures of my mother in law (his gran) at his sisters birthday, for no reason other than he had my camera and he could. Unbeknown to us they would be the last pictures we would get of her alive. She was admitted to hospital two days later and died a month later. But those pictures we look at regularly and see how happy Gran was with her grandchildren and it holds very special memories for us. The kids find the photos very special, so now we take photos all of the time of silly and exciting things so we will always have wonderfult memories just like yours and it is amazing how happy we all feel when we see them.
Thank you for letting me share this.
xx
THIS is why you should snap away at every opportunity. I’m so pleased you have photos to remember her by, daggy or not, people looking at their best or not, memories are all we have. xx
I would love to have a proper photo of my Mum and her best friend at my sister’s wedding. Even though she was an aunt to us, she never ended up in any of the official photos. A couple of weeks after the wedding she found out she had ovarian cancer and died a few months later. Mum has a candid photo someone captured but it just isn’t the same as if she had been in a proper shot.
I still can’t get my head around the idea that when (if) I get married my Aunty Sue won’t be there.
Awwww. This is where I’m sending you hugs and strength Lisa xx
I want to take photos of the world’s ugliest flat (where I’m living right now) so I can remember just how lucky I am to be living in my dream home (when I move in!).
I would want to capture a picture at sunrise in my happy place, Stewart Island. It is beautiful place at the bottom of New Zealand that my camera doesn’t do justice. There may also have to be a cupcake in that photo because I still havn’t been able to take a good photo of one
My happy place is my home, in it with my husband, my baby boy and our two dogs. Memories my family creates are priceless, and I’d love to be able to capture them on a fantastic new camera.
my grandfathers 70th birthday( 2 years ago), it was the last time four generations of my family was all together, he died last year and i miss him so so much
Dear Sandra,
I was only going to comment to say how much I loved your post, but reading other comments reminded me of a happy place. My mother died in 2004. I vividly remember sitting on her couch in the front room of her home in the weeks before she died, the sun streaming in and warming our shoulders. I’ve never been any good with utilizing the fancy settings in cameras, but I bet The Sony cyber shot would have let me take a great photo, on a timer, despite the sun behind us.
I love the comments about chance photos – we never know what life will bring. I’m sure no one in your family imagined what was to come after your holiday. Sitting on the couch, we knew mum was sick, but not that she would soon pass away.
Now, if only Sony can fit the next model with time travel capabilities, we’ll be right! Happy places for the future…? My daughter… Family, friends. Lots of love.
Thanks for sharing your special memories,
Rachael
My happy place and something I’d recapture is anywhere hanging out with my beloved grandma, Nanny. I used to follow Nanny everywhere, bathroom during shower time included, so she’d try to busy me by cleaning her false teeth. We have a great shot of us together — her in the bath, me out the front proudly cleaning both lots of teeth, with both of us grinning from ear to ear. It was taken with one of the old cartridge Kodaks and is so grainy it’s almost indecipherable, but enough to bring back the memories. My mum needs a new camera, so she’d be the happy recipient of it. Thanks for a touching post, Sandra!
I would like to recapture my schools days. I wish I could have taken photos for my year 12 ball and take lots of photos with my friends. It would be nice to be able to look back at such clear, special photos because school was such an important and happy place for me. Sadly, I have very few photos of the friends I made over the years.
I wish I could have taken better photos for my grandma’s 90th birthday. It was a very special occasion and the whole family was there, but sadly no one bothered to bring a camera and my camera didn’t take very clear or good quality photos.
I would love to redo my mum’s 50th birthday party. It was a very special day for her and we had a not so good camera. My mum bought a special photo album for all her photos, but when I looked at all of the photos, they were dark, unclear and just completely terrible. I know how important that day was for her and I wish she could have had better photos to look back on.
I would love to recapture photos of my son playing football.. Every photo I have is blurry or taken right after he was out of shot…
I would love to reall memories to show him how proud I am !
MY happy place to recapture would be the day my last child was born, and my whole family were there my other children my husband, It was the best day of my life.
I would like to recapture the moment my first grandchild was born as I was lucky enough to be there for her entry into out lives one if the most magical moments ever
I’d love to recapture the pictures of family friends and food from when I was holidaying in Vietnam with my family to visit our relatives. Blurry pictures on a rare trip like this really doesn’t capture the emotions and the memories as well.
I would love to recapture my childhood birthdays. My parents would always plan amazing birthday parties for all of the students in my class. There would be lots of games, prizes, food and decorations. Sadly all of the photos were taken with an old camera before the days of digital cameras and are dark, someone has blinked and just bad quality in general.
My happy place would be Singapore. I visited there many years ago and wish I had nice photos to look back upon so I could remember all of the amazing places I visited and the food I ate.
I would love to recapture one of the three holidays I have been on. It makes me sad to think we spent thousands of dollars on a holiday and visited many special places, but we have very few photos that show how unique and pretty the places were and in the good photos, someone has blinked or has been cut out of the photo. If only we had a good digital camera so we could’ve looked back at the photos and retaken them.
I’d love to recapture my childhood. There were so many special moments that have just been forgotten about or not remembered as the amazing and well planned events that they were, such as birthdays, Christmas, Weddings etc.
My happy place was my childhood house. I wish I had photos of the house we lived in for 15 years. I miss it very much.
I’d love to have been able to take photos with my grandma before she passed away. I have very few photos with her.. Maybe 2 or 3 and they are old, unclear and terrible quality. I wish I could have taken better photos with her for me to look back at and to show my kids one day.
I wish I had taken more photos of my daughters and myself so the love and affection we share could be captured and shown to others including their children and spouses. The pictures I have taken are on a cheap camera and i am renown for taking bad pictures if at all.
I want to take more pictures of my family and son. I have plenty of my son now but since time goes so fast I want to remember every little thing I can. I’m also traveling through Australia and would love to be able to take pictures of every place we go. I’ve been here six months and it’s gorgeous.
When we were kids, dad would take us on holiday to Lyme Regis in Dorset. We would go on the lttle fishing boats & catch Mackerel,the best tasting fish ever. We would then go & hunt for fossils on the beach. My camera was not that great & nor was my photographic skills. I broke my camra at Christmas & need a new one, due to meningitus as a teenager i have a bad memory now & i find photo’s really helpfull at helping me remember people, places, feelings…
Lyme Regis is a beautiful part of the world, what a lovely place to spend a childhood
My wedding day – without the dramas from the first time around.
My happy place is in Vanuatu & I would take it to Tanna Island to finally tick off an item on my bucket list….to dance on the edge of the world’s most accessible active volcano, Mount Yasur, and take many, spectacular photos to capture every glorious, adrenaline filled moment!
Oooooh, I like. x
My happy place is our new home, its set on 120 beautiful acres of hills and trees, but our silly old camera is slowly packing it in so whenever I take pictures of our beautiful new life only every third shot works.
My happy place is bed, where we’re relaxed, snug and utterly carefree. I have so many shots of the two of us in there, being silly, brekky in bed, an array of things. I don’t want to re-capture any moments, just ensure all future moments aren’t missed with our now overused, over loved, slightly temperamental camera…..taking shots when it wants to, and when it does pixels are missing in the most crucial places.
My happy place, is the beach in front of my late granparents house. I spent hours sitting there with them and them telling me stories of my mum and their vast family. Even now i go there just to look up at their old house and remember the fond times I had with them and when I am sad or have some news I go there to talk to them and the world seems right again.
Id love photos of the wonderful, carefree beach holidays we had as children, a time when our only worries were ‘whats to eat’?
I love to capture all the nice food I eat around town and around the world!
I do not actually want to take just one photo of my happy place, instead I want to use the brand new HX20V to take photo’s of my older sisters happy place. Next Saturday (30th June) she will be marrying the man of her dreams. I am so proud of her and love her fiance as my older brother! I want to be able to take photos of their wedding so I can have them printed into a coffee table book reminding them everyday of their happy place. Reminding them every day of how much they love each other and where everything began. I want to be able to take the most professional looking photos to start their life. From then, it will become apart of my life, following me around on holidays, through my life’s milestones, mistakes, loves, heartbreaks….allowing me to take photos of everything that makes me happy, so forever I will have memories I can cherish. So that I can look back and remind myself of my happy places.
A ricketty old jetty in a rocky inlet. I was 14, and used to ride my faithful old bike there most afternoons, sit and dangle my legs in the water, and enjoy the solitude. I have no photos of that place, which unfortunately doesn’t exist anymore, but my memories forty years on are as clear as if it was yesterday.
I would love to recapture my time in Italy a few years ago. Beautiful images of days on the beach with family and friends should last a lifetime. (But this time, I’d put something over my swimmers before a photo was taken)!!
My happy place is spent outside with family and friends gathering together for a nice family barbeque.
I would best use this beauty of a camera bytaking it with me wherever I go to capture all those special little moments
I’d like to recapture my nanna’s old house. We spent Christmasses and Easters there. There wasn’t one bad memory. I miss her so much.
At home is where my heart is …would love to take photos of my four beautiful children and capture as many moments as I can ..they are growing up too quick
My bedroom is my happy place – i’d use the camera to capture so arty shots with some mood lighting then hang it on my wall at work to remind me of my happy place.
I lived in Japan in my early 20s, just as 35mm cameras were being phased out (though I still had one!). I loved the country, the food, the history and the people. It’s top of my bucket list to return – this time with a decent camera.
The fun parks in Queensland is my families favourite happy place. I’d love to capture some more great family photo’s having fun on the water slides and rollercoasters.
My bathroom is my happy place. I’d love to re-capture my family Christmas photo. I miss the fun we had
My happy place is with my lovely daughters who I’d love to capture with a great camera.
My happy place was spending a week last year with one of my best friends who lives in the UK. We met online and it was the first time we had met in real life, but it feels like I know her better than most of my friends here! It was the best week of my life!
I’ll be seeing her again next month when I travel to the UK to see her. I’ve been desperately trying to get a camera for this trip but being a broke uni student it’s not easy. I would love to win this camera and put it to great use taking pictures of my trip to see my friend so I have something to remember my happy place when I return home!
My happy place is the memoriesI shared on my grandparents farm. They lived in an old bush house built by my great grandfather and they had no electricity until 1970. Nan cooked on a wood stove and the open fire place and used kerosine lamps and candles for lighting. I loved it there and had the best times, visiting every Sunday and every school holiday. No childhood could have been better. Now, years later, we have bought our own property, and guess what! No electricity! We will need to install solar power when we begin to build. I would love the camera to document our own family gathering in our farmhouse and the wonderful times we are sure to have.
Trincomallee in Sri Lanka, what a peaceful, happy, lost fishing village. Where the sun never fails to shine its love and warmth to a place that has had so much pain and suffering
On the day my dughter graduated I would love to have had a camera that coped with the overcast, cloudy, dull conditions. Sadly a set of blurry shots are all I have to remind me of this proud moment in time.
The world through the eyes of a 5 year old. It’s full of vibrant colours, beauty and mystery.
My ‘happy place’ is baking and crafting, sometimes with my kids and sometimes experimenting with the tricky stuff alone. At the moment I take photos with my phone – it is great for general family snaps, but not so great for detailed close-up work, like the kids’ school art and also our efforts in the kitchen. I would love to have a great camera for recording the results of these ‘happy place’ activities.
I wish I could recreate the first christmas we had with my dad’s family, we had finally moved interstate and were living near them after 22 years (my dad and 16 years me). We were all happy and everyone was getting along. it was before my beautiful Aunt got horribly ill, before two divorces, 2 deaths (our beloved Nonna and Nonno), before the family disintegrated into bitterness and sadness for what feels like forever. We are happy again, if a little segmented and fractured in places. but that day was wonderful. all our families melded together and eating and drinking and celebrating what it was/is to be family. i would redo those happy memories in a heartbeat.
1 – The day my son was born!
2 – The day in October when my 2nd son will be born!
x
3 – A re do of my grainy, not-so-great wedding photos.
4 – proud keepsake of my first herb garden.
5 – more photos of my dearly departed Grandparents from Greece.
6 – The first time my 4 year old felt the new baby move – his gorgeous face was precious and priceless!
7 – A time in the future when I get to take an overseas trip for the first time. Probably when the boys have grown up and left home!
8 – Foodalicious memories!
9 – Christmastime!
10 – My sons face when I took him for a chocolate filled treat at Max Brenner. The deliciousness was overwhelming!
My happy place is the kitchen with wonderful aromas, surrounded by family, but IWould love the camera to take wonderful fun photos of my beautiful miracle baby who is now 2 and the time has flown so fast I have an old camera that works when it wants to and when I push the shutter on a special moment it won’t work arrgghh so to have a reliable camera would be wonderful to capture those beautiful moments, precious smiles, and cheeky moments thanks for the opportunity to enter
Michigan, December 25th, 2002. The small hours of the morning. Discovering that it’s been snowing the last few hours and the small town I’m visiting is a winter wonderland. Walking for hours with the man I love, just him, me, and the occasional snow plough. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
A new camera now? For sunrises. For laughter with my friends. For pics of my kids as they mature into beautiful adults. One day – soon, I hope – for Paris.
Who won??