My brother and myself, 1960
Today is the day of Nicole's FFO Portrait Challenge and I admit that I first didn't want to participate. But then I read that photographs are accepted as well, so I'm in. Nicole suggested five categories - happy, sad, tired, surprised or anger. Sadly, there was no "goofy" category (I have a good amount of those), so I opted for the happy faces. The hardest part was to make a selection.
This picture was taken in 1962 or 1963. My paternal grandparents who lived in Heidelberg used to go to Timmendorfer Strand at the Baltic Sea for their summer vacation. (I guess being at the Baltic Sea still felt a little bit like home for them after they got out of Danzig [Gdansk] with the last refugee ship at the end of March 1945 - this was called "Operation Hannibal".) When we still lived in Lower Saxony, not too far away from Hamburg, my parents, brother and I would go and visit them since it wasn't a very long drive. It had a lot of magic for us children since we were allowed to ride on these carousel figures along the Strandpromenade (seafront or boardwalk) - it was my grandpa who generously fed pieces of 10 Pfennig in the slots. It felt like heaven for us. You can see my grandma behind me and the pink blouse on the right belongs to my mom.
When I first thought of a happy, laughing face, I was thinking of this picture of Kaefer, taken when she was almost 18 months old.
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She is sitting in her stroller and had just succeeded "stealing" her dad's hat. She was playing around with it - I did take an entire series of photos (this was all still on film, done with my SLR camera), and my favorite one is this one:
Still very happy, but there is also a hint of mischievous - she was a little rascal.
No explanatory words needed for the next one.
She truly was a happy child.
And she still is - happy, not a child anymore -, especially when animals are involved.
But I also found a non-human happy face. I had almost forgotten that I have this. I took it back in 1999 when we visited our relatives in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (in the Northeast of Germany) where they had a horse farm. Every morning Kaefer would walk around the open stables and greet the horses, completely fearless. That's when I captured this horse - it's definitely laughing!
Yeehaw!
4 comments:
There is nothing more endearing in my mind than the smile of a child or their laughter. Thanks for sharing these beautiful moments, as well as the one with the funny horse. Blessings!
You better NOT pull this post. These are fantastic. I love seeing the faces of all these wonderful expressions. You have nailed this challenge perfectly. Thank you so much for joining in the FFO Portrait Challenge and have a very lovely weekend.
Love your happy faces!
Great photos! No one expresses happiness (and every other emotion) with the freshness, rawness and force of children! Love that horse too!
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