Golden Years - Continuing With My Personal Project

Anna still loves participating in art classes. She showed me some of her paintings.

So I'm intrigued with beautiful older people. They represent wisdom, experience, survival, knowledge...and I, for one, would like to learn more about them.  I was doing a portrait of my neighbor last week and remembered that she has a beautiful mother who is 95 and full of vim and vigor. So I asked if we could go visit Mom and photographer her. Dorothy loved the idea, because she knows what a treasure her mother is, so we headed over to Anna Scrugg's home where I was greeted warmly and shown some of her lovely treasures.

She has the most amazing kitchen - large enough to cook for many and she told me about some of the large parties she hosted from that kitchen. She's been living in her current house for 40 years - at one time you could see Austin's Capitol from her porch - hard to believe with all of the development that has occurred over the years. She was a teacher in the Austin schools and her husband was a principal.  Her memories and her family are the most important thing to her.  She showed me her wall of family photographs which made me very happy - treasuring memories through printed photographs is so important to me.

Here's a photo of her class - can you figure out which one is her?

Anna is just as sweet as can be. Her smile is contagious and her enthusiasm for life is amazing.  She had been to the nail parlor that morning and was showing me that she got talked into having her nails colored black - because that's the new "in" color. 

Dorothy showed me a photo of her mom in an avocado costume "because she loves avocados!"  I hope Anna stays as youthful, healthy and happy for many years to come.  She is such a joy to visit with!

My photography allows me to experience some wonderful people and places. I hope photography brings you the happiness that it brings me.  Keep shooting, friends!