Lake Lure Photography: Family Portrait at Stepp's Hillcrest Apple Orchard
Lake Lure Family Portrait Session at Stepp's Hillcrest Orchard
Culturally, we love young love. We want bright, shiny, and new love. We delight in pristine white dresses, perfect hair, unlined faces, and dreaming of what could possibly lay ahead. We want perfect photos of that perfect moment as the story begins.
But I love old love.
Give me a love story with a few bends in the cover, some dog-eared pages, a coffee stain or two, some notes in the margins, and chapter after chapter of unimaginable joy, laughter, gut-wrenching sorrows, obstacles overcome, and quiet moments as we focus on the incredible magic of now.
Maybe I’m looking at life a little differently, now that I’m married. More likely, not being able to see my parents as often as I’d like makes me look at them a little differently these days. Maybe their love story, their nuances, their cadence is just that much more precious to me.
Whatever it is, when I finally picked up a camera to start shooting for fun again (it’s been longer than I’m willing to admit), this was the story I wanted to tell.
This is the story of my mom and dad.
But before they were my mom and dad, they were a vivacious, mischievous beauty from Miami and a hardworking, loyal, ambitious young man from the sticks. They ate pizza and drank beer (she drank him under the table), they went backpacking when Daisy Dukes were all the rage for men (sorry, Dad, but that photo scarred me for life), they had a grocery budget of $11 a week. They bought their second house, and they planted a tiny Charlie Brown-style oak tree in front of it.
They struggled and cried and fought through that seemingly never-ending chapter of infertility that I watch so many of my friends grappling with today, and they chose to share that part of their story with my sister and me, their happy endings and new beginnings.
My dad built us the coolest swing-set in the neighborhood by hand, and my mom sewed the most incredible canvas houses to go on top of it. And that’s about the perfect metaphor for their partnership, in some ways. He’ll build the frame and make sure it’s sturdy enough to withstand the storms to come. She’ll add the warmth and whimsy that makes it a wonderland out of the ordinary.
It’s been a long time since my dad wore his Daisy Dukes to accompany my mom’s bell-bottom jeans, but they still eat pizza and drink beer on occasion. That scrawny oak sapling grew into an incredibly massive tree as the years slipped away. The swing-set yielded to garden beds, and today those beds are filled with grandchildren’s toys and my dog’s tennis balls.
The vivacious, mischievous beauty from Miami and her hardworking, loyal, ambitious young man from the sticks are enjoying turning the pages one at a time, holding hands as they wait for the next chapter to unfold in a story that’s uniquely theirs.
Look closely at these photos: you just might see him pat her on the butt.