She’s one crazy chick. Completely unpredictable, which is part of why I loved photographing her so much. With two older brothers she holds her own and is utterly fearless. She flitted around like a butterfly where everything intrigued her and called her to experience it in its entirety. Each time she obliged the call, so quickly flinging herself into the moment at hand that I had difficulty keeping up. My heart beat fast a good deal of the time while photographing her because I never could be sure of what was coming. I only knew that I wanted to be ready.

In the beginning I thought her to be a tomboy but was completely wrong on this. Again unpredictable, she was in fact quite feminine at her core. The best kind of feminine though–that which is delicately wrapped in strength and tenacity, revealing itself only when trust and respect are forthcoming.

I’d been sitting on the ground across from her where she was thoughtfully inspecting a small bug when out of the blue she threw herself backwards as if falling into bed exhausted at the end of the day. I was totally unprepared for this and all I could think to say was “wait a minute!�, hoping she’d stay put for the time it took me to spring to my feet and photograph her from overhead. I actually couldn’t believe she stayed still since where she’d landed was very prickly and not in the least bit comfortable.

In viewing the couple of images made from this particular incident I immediately wished for the chance for a do over to get the elements exactly as I wanted. I imagined the perfect image that might have been attained had this or that had been slightly different and my aperture not so wide. I even briefly considered trying to recreate this scenario with the next child I photographed in hopes of achieving such perfection. But any magic at all that exists in this place is only the result of a very unpredictable little girl following her own unique impulse and simply falling backwards when the moment inspired her to do so.

Who knows, maybe authentic magic always exists just a little bit outside the bounds of perfection anyway. I like to think so.

~Cynthia