Some friends asked me to come over and take photographs of a naming ceremony for their two grandchildren. I love doing photo assignments like that, it is a creative challenge – have to figure out the light and the lenses – but it is also a wonderful affirmation of photography. Assignments like that take you out of yourself and your normal comfort zone, they are a wonderful use of photography. They are affirmations of life, the big stories that will never make their news, but which bring light and love and meaning to our news. Once, journalists knew that, now they think stories only happen in the offices of Washington bureaucrats and in bloody and violent conflicts.

The setting was simple, they were planting two trees on a hillside, one for each daughter, and a minister read from some beautiful Celtic poems.

There is pressure in an assignment like this – you don’t want to disappoint, you won’t get a second chance.  The lighting was bad, the line of sight clouded with trees and cars. And it is a nice gift for friends who have done a lot for me. They also remind me of something else. There is a skill to photography, all photographs are not the same, if you are open to feeling, you can capture the feeling in front of you. I conducted a naming ceremony once, long ago, for two children that were lost to me, and I did try and picture them there, just for a moment, but it was not about me, it was about someone else’s children, and  it lifted my heart to see this one, so full of life and connection.