(AL scenery top L-R: Ruffner Mountain, Selma Cemetery, Ruffner Mountain)
(AL scenery bottom L-R: Crestwood Park, North Crestwood neighborhood, Hoover)
I’ve made a practice of snapping a photo when a scene strikes my fancy, which is made easy when your phone doubles as a camera. The result is a photo library filled with bejeweled sunsets, leafy hiking trails and various other landscapes, objects or beings that capture my attention. Because it’s Friday and I could use a break from depressing shit, I decided to delve into the images on my phone and meditate on the simple beauty of my everyday surroundings.
(Sunset after storms, Birmingham’s North Crestwood neighborhood)
The compulsion to capture an image is in my DNA. My grandfather, Eddie Bredar, was a prolific amateur photographer. He died when I was in third grade, but we had a special relationship and I still feel him with me. He was a plumber by trade but an artist at heart, carving stained glass trinkets in a dirt-floor shed behind his house while listening to opera on an AM radio. He was the first person who told me I was smart and creative. That’s what mattered most to him, he could care less whether or not I was pretty.
I have bags of Papa’s old slides and countless sleeves of photographs he took during his life. Sometimes I get them out and shuffle through them, looking for his essence in the images. What was it that he saw in that stretch of dusty highway, or that black starling on a power line or that pine tree against a steely grey sky? What was he seeking when he tried to capture what he saw? Why do we want to keep these scenes with us, preserving their image forever?
(Sunset at Smith Lake)
Like Papa, I mostly photograph natural images: landscapes, trees, flowers, sunsets. I noticed as I shuffled through my library some recurring themes. A dirt path cutting through deep woods. A tangerine-streaked sky at sunset. Green leaves glittering like emeralds on display. Light filtering through tangles of kudzu. These images are interrupted by other recurring characters—family, dogs, cakes, friends. But the gallery returns to the natural scenes of my life, over and over again, as I keep encountering this beauty around me and trying to capture it, to hold it like a prize.
(Trees in Mentone)
These meandering thoughts mirror the wandering path I’ve taken professionally in the last few years, trying to catch the most meaningful and creative work, not in the crevices of my life but as my life itself. Papa never could fully live his art—he stayed a blue collar worker until his life was nearly over, but I know he tried to grasp every last beautiful moment and idea with the time and energy he could supply.
I’ve seen it in his bags of snapshots, the trinkets, and the wisdom he left with me: that I am more than how the world sees me, more than a trinket, an image. I am the meaning I give to the days I have left, the words I mark time with and the beauty I choose to see and celebrate. All who wander are not lost, and like treasured photographs he left behind, I share some of what I’ve kept with you.
Wow Beth what pictures and such awesome memories👍🏼👍🏼🥰