Here’s one for TBT (Throwback Thursday) circa 1994 – it has a funny story behind it. I was working as a designer at the T-shirt company. They wanted an image for the front of their blank apparel catalog that featured basic products; white sweatshirts, T-shirts, etc. and conveyed that it was a small company with family values.
It was January and the weather was ghastly. We were on deadline, and it was my job to work with the photography studio and arrange a photo shoot, plus find and arrange for appropriate models – and make sure this was orchestrated in said ghastly weather with treacherous driving conditions for all. I was freaking out.
In a fit of desperation to avoid doing the above list of things, I went home on my lunch hour, grabbed my camera and took this picture of my husband and my son Jordan on our enclosed (but not heated) porch. I had to work fast – figure out an appropriate pose for them – it was well below zero outside and not much warmer inside the porch. So a half naked baby and barefoot husband lost patience quickly…
I had no idea how the resulting pictures were going to turn out. I dropped the film off at the one hour photo department in the drugstore on the way back from lunch, and drove to get the developed pictures on my break that same afternoon. I can’t think of another time when freaking out and avoiding doing what I was supposed to has paid off so well…
The porch where the above picture was taken is shown here between the dog and the chimney in this “before” picture of the house. There are some significantly better “after” pictures, as well as some scary in-betweens in the blog post here.
Because funds were tight, we could only afford to replace the existing ripped up screening on this porch with inexpensive storm windows. This made it an exercise in futility to try and heat – as it faces Southwest – the direction of prevailing winter winds. But for three seasons out of the year it’s a pleasant, sunny place to hang out. Before the porch was added to the house, this apparently served as a direct entrance to the cellar from outside. The original stairs are still there, and there’s a heavy steel plate covering the current entrance hole. You can just barely see it in the top image beside the word “because”.
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Gina Keesling's blog 
You have an amazing eye, Gina. That photo is absolutely spot on–the lighting is lovely and your models ARE the message. I love the bare feet!
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Thanks for the kind words. It really was a miracle of sorts – as the lighting was perfect during the 30 minutes or so of time I had to take the picture. The camera was an inexpensive Pentax K1000, and I was NOT very clever about how to use it, either. Rob was a great dad (still is) to Jordan, and spent a lot of time with him when he was a tiny baby – so this picture really captured that bond.
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