the life of m

Monica Sanders, 35, comforts a tearful Simeon, 4, after he stubbed his toe.

Jael Sanders, 13

Eve Sanders, 9

Brian Sanders, 35

My nightly ventures down to the river. A time to clear my head. Quiet solitude, except for a muster of peacocks across the way. Dumping thoughts from the day into the water, with each lapping wave. To be taken away, out to the bay, and beyond.

Life is full of beautiful mistakes.

You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success…So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive…and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivered a great commencement address last week at Harvard University entitled, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.”

If you haven’t already, see it, hear it, or read it here. It was as reaffirming as it was inspiring.

I shot the top picture at the Confederate flag raising Saturday, after I noticed this little guy, sitting atop his uncle’s shoulders kept passing in and out of a beautiful band of light. I made one frame before they moved on.

When I was editing my stuff from this assignment, our new Summer intern was looking over my shoulder. He said he really liked this frame because it reminded him a lot of another frame I shot a few days earlier at a technology conference.

HAHA. Damn. So much for originality.