Remarkable Ordinary Moments

I loved watching my dad switch into photographer mode. He knew a great shot the instant he saw it. We could be anywhere when he might suddenly spot a scene that called out to him that it needed to be photographed. He would stomp on the brakes and cause lenses and film canisters to come rolling out from under the seat of the car. His camera was always close by. He might use his shirt to give the lens a quick dusting. In an instant, he would change from Dad to Spot News Tom. He would approach the subject with confidence. He somehow conveyed, without words, that he was supposed to be doing exactly what he was doing; taking pictures of a random stranger. He might snap a few quick shots before the subject stopped doing whatever it was that my father saw a great feature picture in.  Then he would put out his hand, smiling all the way, and say, “How ya’ doin’? Tom Franklin, The Charlotte Observer.” I loved that part. He said it with real authority, but in a warm voice.

Dad would quickly grab his reporter’s notepad out of his pocket and start asking questions. He would explain that he thought it was a great image that would most likely run in the paper. He would get their names and then just have a friendly chat with them about whatever activity they had been doing that caught his attention. He listened and was fascinated by everyone’s stories. He could see beauty in the smallest of everyday activities that most of us would just pass by. It was his job to notice, but he truly was a natural observer of life.

Dad getting details from fireman.

Meeting people and capturing a beautiful moment in their life was his favorite part of the job. He shot hurricanes, tragedies, and world leaders. But he was at his best when capturing scenes from everyday life. I recently found a print that demonstrates what we meant when we would say that Dad had an “eye for photography.” He had been driving around the city on a hot summer day. He needed a great shot that demonstrated that it was an especially hot summer. A heatwave. As he meandered around the city, he spotted a welder. What could be hotter than welding on a summer day? He stopped, took some shots of the welder in action. After the worker stopped and answered the obligatory questions for Dad to jot down in his notepad, the welder took a break. He sat down and fired up a cigarette. His goggles were pushed up on his forehead. He had beads of sweat covering his square-jawed handsome face. His fingers that held the cigarette were stained from welding and heavily calloused. This was the real hot weather shot and dad knew it. Most photographers would have already returned to their cars and headed to the darkroom with some sparkly welding pictures. But Dad recognized the pureness of the moment when the man, with a look of complete satisfaction on his face, relaxed with a smoke.

Often Dad would go into photographer mode with his own children. There is a picture of me that demonstrates that at times his eye for a great photo was sometimes his first instinct.  In the photo, I look to be about three years old. I am standing in knee deep water in the ocean. My hair is standing straight up, my clothes are soaking wet, and I am making the best cry face ever. It’s apparent that I had just been pounded by a wave and I did not like it one bit. I’m sure my mother came rushing to pick me up while my father snapped away. 

You might think that I would be upset that my father thought of the photo opportunity before coming to my rescue, but you would be mistaken. It’s one of my favorite photos that he took of me. It’s a real moment. A moment that I learned something about the nature of life. An instant when I was immersed in the inevitability that life is going to send waves crashing over your head from time to time. A genuine and spontaneous baptism by an unpredictable universe. This picture makes me smile. So maybe the most fatherly thing he could have done in that moment was to capture in black and white that there is beauty in even our most vulnerable moments. A reminder that life is a series of seemingly ordinary moments. Some are joyful and some are trying. But each frame is remarkable and worthy of our notice.