In nearly a decade of marriage, I had never met my brother-in-law nor his daughters, my nieces. Over the Christmas holiday, I finally got to meet them all. Now, I might not have gotten to have spent as much time getting to know them all as I did were it not for the fact that my brother-in-law became jealous of my other brother-in-law’s Christmas photos from last year which I shot. A conversation ensued, a call was made, I cleared my morning, and we had a regular family reunion with my wife, her two brothers, and their families. For them, it was all about catching up. For me, it was all about recording some new memories of being together for them.

This is the photo of my niece, Kayla.

This is my second portrait of Lacey.

Lacey’s family life isn’t perfect and there are lots of things going on, but they’re pressing through.

It was nice to get to photograph her and let her feel special for a little while.

I’m a photographer.

There’s this little town called Niangua. It’s in Missouri.

There’s this auction house. It’s called Asher’s.

Asher’s set up a Christmas Shop so that all the kids in Niangua could buy Christmas presents for their loved ones. Lots of neat stuff was sold and nothing cost more than a quarter. Over 100 kids bought gifts for their families.

Santa Claus was also at the shop.

All the kids got to visit Santa after they shopped and they got to tell him all about their Christmas wishes and give him a great big hug.

There was a little girl named Tori.

Tori was very sick. She was so sick that she almost didn’t make it to the Christmas Shop. This had made Tori very sad as her sickness caused her to miss the little Niangua Christmas parade earlier that same day.

But, Tori was determined to get her family some gifts and to meet Santa Claus and tell him her most special wish (to receive a Christmas Barbie for Christmas this year). Tori mustered up all of her strength and her parents got her to the shop where she bought them gifts and she met with Santa and gave him a great big hug (causing old Santa to shed more than a few tears).

I’m a photographer.

I got to tell the story.

The lovely Makalee of Marshfield, MO.

I had long wished to photograph Makalee. She has a fresh, clean look and a genuinely pretty style. She honored me with agreeing to a session and I captured this and a short series of other images of her at North Park in Marshfield.

I like that Lacey always makes it a point to have herself “put together” – a rare quality in women these days. Now, it’s not a whole Donna Reed dress and heels affair with Lacey, but she is always neat (and keeps Josh and Nate equally neat) and I’ve never seen her without the most basic of makeup. It pretty much goes without saying that I’ve been eager to have a chance at photographing her at some point. When she asked me to please photograph her family, I began planning this shot and saved it for the very end of the session when we got together for the photos this past weekend.

As you can see, this image of Lacey looks amazing and it was a real honor and privilege to be not only allowed, but actually asked to make all of the images of Lacey and her family.

[As I make the transition from whatever the heck I once was to whatever it is I'm becoming next, I've been working on my photography a bit more seriously.

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a 'photographer' in any serious sense of the word. I can handle a camera and get an image out of it. I then spend a good amount of time in Lightroom and Photoshop "massaging" (and sometimes literally "beating") my images into something worth seeing. I don't look down on my own work because of this process, though. I look down on my work because I want to be so much better at it.]

I met Willow at an event at one of the local churches here in Marshfield, MO. I was taken by her bright personality, easy smile, and general beauty. I shot a couple of candid shots of her and liked what I got so I asked her to pose for me. About a month later we went to a local park with a lovely wooded area and produced a set of photos for her.

This is our mutual favorite photo of the session. Conceived as just something “artistic” to do, it was never actually intended to figure in the proper session, but once I was done with post-processing it was obvious that there was a great image here.

She was selling handmade jewelry and I never even got her name. She only had a few items for sale. A bad operation on her leg led to an amputation.

Complications from the amputation led to a second amputation farther up. The whole situation had forced her to stop working on her crafts. Finally, tired of sitting around the house, she made her husband take her out to sell the few pieces she’d made at the festival.

She told me that she was grateful for the amputation. She said that it wasn’t going to stop her from anything, but that it had helped to slow her down. Then she asked me if I “went to church” and told me that she believed it was God’s way of drawing her closer to him. I loved her attitude and her faith. In a few moments of simply listening, I came to love her.

You see me now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars
I’ve been living on the edge so long, where the winds of limbo roar
And I’m young enough to look at, and far too old to see
All the scars are on the inside
I’m not sure that there’s anything left of me

Don’t let these shakes go on, it’s time we had a break from it
It’s time we had some leave
We’ve been living in the flames
We’ve been eating up our brains
Oh please, don’t let these shakes go on.

You ask me why I’m weary, why I can’t speak to you
You blame me for my silence, say it’s time I changed and grew
But the war’s still going on, dear, and there’s nowhen that I know
And I can’t stand forever
I can’t say if we’re ever gonna be free

Don’t let these shakes go on, it’s time we had a break from it
It’s time we had some leave
We’ve been living in the flames
We’ve been eating up our brains
Oh please, don’t let these shakes go on.

You see me now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars
My energy is spent at last, and my armor is destroyed
I have used up all my weapons, and I’m helpless and bereaved
Wounds are all I’m made of
Did I hear you say that this is victory?

Don’t let these shakes go on, it’s time we had a break from it
Send me to the rear
Where the tides of madness swell
And men sliding into hell
Oh please, don’t let these shakes go on.

-Blue Oyster Cult

This little boy is a neighbor of ours. He’s about 7 years old and lives in an old barn/warehouse that doubles a a sort of make-shift auction house. He’s a happy kid who likes to ride his bike with the other kids here in our neighborhood and who loves helping others out whenever he can. In fact, he was helping me with a photo shoot when I managed to snap this photo of him under the pretense of needing a test subject to help me get the photo set up right. He tells me that his jacket is the only one he’s really had since “the first time [he] was in the first grade.”

I had taken other photos of the boy along with some of his friends and decided that I would put together some nice prints of the pictures I’d made and present them to all the boys’ families. We had a great time doing “superhero” and “kung fu” and “looking cool dude” poses and I came away with some of my very favorite images ever.

I’m not the kind of person to wait around to see people’s reactions to gifts. I feel it’s more important to give and leave people to appreciate things in their own time and in their own way and to go about my business and await my rewards from Heaven. So, I wasn’t there when the boy’s mother opened the package I gave her, and I didn’t see the tears in her eyes. I couldn’t have ever known, just from knowing the boy since we moved here, that the family had suffered through a flood that destroyed all the photos the family had of the boy, baby pictures and all. I only came to know these things because they shared these things with my wife afterwards.

The mother says that she likes this particular photo because she feels it captures the real spirit and nature of the boy.

With his last five dollars, the boy’s father wanted to get his wife something special for Christmas. She took the money and went into town and bought some frames at a dollar store for the photos we’d given her. It was all she wanted.

He struck up a conversation with us on his own, commenting on how cold it was (about 27-degrees out that day). We were at the laundromat in Marshfield, Missouri, and he was telling my wife that it was nice to be there as the dryers made the place warm and he had no heat in his home.

His name is John, John Hoochman. He is a lifelong resident of Marshfield having been born there “the old way” and raised there on a farm where he and his brothers, one of whom is his identical twin, slept in a loft that “felt just like if you were outside” according to him (one reason why the lack of heat in his home didn’t bother him). John attended school in a one-room schoolhouse his family apparently owned and has his high school diploma.

The only time he spent away from Marshfield and the surrounding area was when he was drafted into the Army to serve in the Viet Nam War. He was a supply driver, and he once drove a jeep for President Richard Nixon. He was in Viet Nam until the end of the war and then he returned, unharmed, to Marshfield.

John remembers Niangua when the trains still stopped there. He says that when the trains stopped servicing the town, the old white warehouse by the tracks was converted into a feed store and that a grocery store “not as big as WalMart, but a good one” operated out of the big red warehouse that is now the Asher Auction House, City Hall, Police Station, and recently closed antiques store.

In 1972, John had an accident with his own tractor and lost his left leg up to the knee. Laying there hurt and bleeding out he cried out to God and promised that if God would spare his life that he would work hard all the rest of his life. On February 2nd, John received his wooden leg and on the 3rd he went to work in a dairy farm. A few years later he went to work at a steel mill in Seymour, Missouri, directly south of Niangua and Marshfield, and he retired as a welder from there 35 years later. John told me that you have to keep a promise that you make to God, “it never goes right when you don’t.”

Nowadays, John lives in one of three farms owned by him and his brothers. He says he had a wife and a couple of daughters “but, when the daughters grew up and left the house she decided it was time for her to leave too.” The brothers raise beef cattle (they used to raise cattle for dairy as well but have stopped doing so commercially, only using the dairy for their own needs now).

John told me that if I saw him around to be sure to say hello, but to first make sure it wasn’t his twin brother because his brother looks exactly like him “but 15 minutes older,” and he made sure to invite me to hang out with him sometime at the WalMart where he goes just about every morning (I’d know he was there just by looking for his little red pickup truck). As he finished his laundry, he showed me his thermal underwear and fleece-lined jeans that keep him warm in his unheated home.