Painting With Light

“The Ride” © R.L. Herron

I came across this image today while looking through photos stored on my computer. It brought a smile to my face.

It shows my eldest son driving his grandfather’s tractor with his son on his lap. My grandson was so excited at the ride through a field overgrown with weeds and wildflowers.

I recalled the day I took it, and how careful I had been to use a large aperture to minimize depth of field. I wanted the foreground and background, while remaining identifiable, to be out-of-focus and incidental to the two of them.

That was captured pretty much as I intended. There’s also something else captured there, which you can’t see and I didn’t realize myself until I saw it again.

A sense of déjà vu.

We all know déjà vu is the experience of feeling certain one has already witnessed or experienced a situation. The firm sense the experience has genuinely happened in the past.

In this case, it almost did.

Thirty-four years ago, probably about the same time of year, that same tractor was going through the same spot in that same field.

Only the driver was me and the passenger was my son.

I can recall that day with utter clarity. I’m certain if I searched I could find a grainy snapshot of the two of us, taken at almost the identical spot. It’s a very emotional feeling.

It’s somehow comforting to know my son has been able to experience the same gratification I felt at sharing that moment with him. There are four generations in that photo. My father-in-law (94 now), me, my son and my grandson. All linked by that tractor and that field.

Déjà vu.

It’s a good memory I wish more people could share. Come to think of it, now they have.

This entry was posted on March 3, 2011 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Lifestyle, Non-Fiction Writing, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.