kate guy photography

November is my favorite month: the season’s first crisp mornings, which usually also mean the season’s first fires; changing leaves and cozy evenings reading; my favorite holiday, favorite food, and my birthday. In fact my only complaint about November is that with each passing year Santa sticks his overly jolly rear-end further into it.

But of all of the wonderful things about November I think my favorite might just be Autumn walks. With all the beautiful colors and the crunch of leaves and acorns under foot, I think it’s impossible to take a walk in the fall and maintain a foul mood. So I took many this year, usually alone and camera-less. I didn’t have the time I’d have liked to go explore the city and surrounding area and so walks were usually confined to my neighborhood. Sometimes it’s hard to get inspired just walking the streets you see everyday. It’s also stressful to point a camera - any of my “big” cameras especially - at someone’s house, not knowing how they might react. I find these days people are suspicious and defensive much more often than they are open to the idea that your intentions aren’t nefarious; that perhaps you might just find the vignette of pumpkins on their porch appealing, or the leaves on their maple tree too stunning to pass up.

And this is where I find instant cameras to be like a magic spell. Charming and disarming all at once, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who thinks of an instant camera as threatening. Mostly they just draw wistful, sentimental musings from people who remember their entire adolescence in glossy, washed out 3x3 snapshots. When my sweet friend Donna passed along her little instant camera last year I was immediately smitten.

For my birthday this year my family gave me a fantastic Polaroid. So wanting to play, and also enjoy an Autumn stroll with the boys, I decided an impromptu late afternoon photo walk was in order. I carried the Polaroid, and they shared the little Leica and together I’d say we captured Autumn in our neighborhood pretty well. They’ve both come to love photography almost as much as me and I just adore seeing the images they make, getting a little glimpse into the way they see the world. And while my youngest still has a bit of a hard time holding the camera steady (yielding some spectacularly fuzzy photos), they both have a great eye. I’d like to say that they’ve learned it from me but the truth is their unique perspectives are all their own, and I hope that they keep them that way.