What I learned from the Titanic

The Titanic Exhibit verified everything I already knew.

While I was on vacation, we went to a Titanic Exhibit. It wasn’t the heart wrenching letters or the hand-sewn baby shoes, but the room filled with black and white photography that got me in the end. Tears just started flowing. It was the room I spent the most time in by far.

The room was filled with truly incredible black and white imagery from the days leading up to her first and last voyages. Without Father Browne’s film camera, there would have been no photos of the Titanic. The negatives of this series of images weren’t found until after I was born in the 80’s, and they barely survived the conditions of storage as it was. To see them hanging in a room together, transporting you to another time and place, was breathtaking.

Father Francis Browne was a teacher, and he was asked not to lecture on his experience on the Titanic afterwards. Although he had been censored, Browne still documented with beautiful storytelling in the quiet and in his own way.

He made albums of his work and wrote anecdotal narratives to document his experience. The gallery walls were filled with dates, times, places, and the people, some of which experienced being photographed for the very last time.

Browne was an incredible documentary photographer, who walked quietly on the decks taking pictures of the everyday-fleeting moments most would have considered mundane, but over a century later, I KNEW these people because of Browne. Mailmen bringing on bags of correspondence, a robust gymnasium with the best equipment, people trying on life vests, a Sunday stroll on deck- all captured stunningly from a fly on the wall witnessing beautiful excitement and novelty.

And all I could think was...

Do you know how many times I’ve heard excuses from incredible people, doing incredible things who just want to hide from my camera?

“Maybe when I lose the weight. What am I going to do with pictures of myself anyways? There’s nothing special about my story.”

Oh my love, you’ve LIVED.

You were born worthy of being seen, heard, and understood.

Every.single.moment is worth documenting, because you never know when it will be your last

And I know with certainty that when everything else is gone, what we'll long for won't be what's stored in the cloud. It will be the photographs we can hold in our hands as the quiet proof that we were here, that we loved, and that our lives mattered.

I have a Podcast!

Connecting with the community has always been a priority for me, and starting a podcast was just another avenue I decided to take to do just that. It was way out of my comfort zone at first, but I slid into it easy enough. Actually, I started work on the second episode immediately afterwards due to all the excitement I was feeling from having completed something on my 2023 Vision Board. I am so comfortable storytelling but have avoided confronting and sharing my own for far too long.

Click this image to hear the podcast on Spotify!

In Episode One, I dive deep into my life's journey to better explain my mission behind the lens. It was a raw, deeply personal way for me to break down barriers, confront vulnerability, and offer the community to experience photography with a purpose. By building these connections and creating through a lens of joy and self-worth, I plan to leave this world a bit better than I found it growing up. I hope you enjoy listening!