TJ Hirst

The emotions at a baby’s birth—anticipation, pain, gratitude, and love—are rarely captured by a camera. Birth is a private story but one that portrait photographer, Minna Dyer, wanted to tell.

As a mother she knows these emotions. As a photographer her work expresses the life and love of families, especially mothers and their babies.

But when she approached a couple in her family and asked if she could document their birth experience, she discovered, “Giving birth is very different from watching someone give birth.”

Photographing the birth was unique. Her purpose was to be a photographer, but sometimes the events took her attention away from that purpose. She had to remind herself that she was an observer and they didn’t need her there. Quite obviously, she couldn’t direct the shots like she was accustomed to doing.

Despite some awkward adjustments, she found her place. “As it became more emotional, I felt more intrusive. I would need to take a step back. Then I would take an opportunity to take a few steps in and take a few shots and then retract.”

She created a beautiful and tasteful birth slide show, using music to soften the documentary-style photography. “I didn’t want it to be so raw. Music was the key; it adds a completely different element. Music makes us feel.” Her photographs do the same thing.

By experimenting with different angles or perspectives in different environments or situations, she uncovers genuine emotions.

Minna captured one such candid moment in a family by lying on her side with the camera very close to her. Her point of view highlights the body language that connects the couple to each other and their child.

When she edited the photograph, she enhanced the color with her settings. “I wanted to saturate it and make it pop.”

When Minna is deciding whether to make a photograph black and white or color, she simply tests it with editing software. “Sometimes I like to focus on the people. Sometimes color can be distracting. If the color is not doing anything for the photograph then I make it black and white or sepia to focus on the content rather than other visual stimulation.”

The resulting combination of perspective and color focuses on the joy evident in that family picture.

In her personal life, Minna finds joy in both motherhood and photography. When she has been busy with family responsibilities and hasn’t taken many photographs, she knows she is missing something in her life. But, likewise, she can sense if her photography business, Miriam Lovell Photography, is putting too much pressure on her husband. “Dan is very supportive and would never tell me he doesn’t want me to do this, but, I know when I am needed. I just don’t get carried away since I have other responsibilities. My priorities are at home.”

Her personal priorities guide her focus as a photographer. Through portraiture, she perceives and preserves human emotion. The resulting photographs visually invite viewers to feel what her subject feels. And a bond of understanding is born.

Focus on the Details, Part III is the final post in a series from an interview on portraiture with Minna Dyer of Miriam Lovell Photography. View photo cards and her gallery of photographs at her website. Learn from her regular photo assignments on her photography blog. Her images are copyrighted by Miriam Lovell Dyer of Miriam Lovell Photography. Images cannot be used without express written permission.

“At what moment is a smile a smile?”

Minna Dyer asks this question as she contemplates “getting the perfect shot” in portrait photography. “I like to take a lot of shots—try to capture as much as I can—and then decide which one is the best. There are so many parts to a laugh, so many parts to a smile. Who is to say what part is the best?”

Two brothers she photographed were “on each other the whole time.” Capturing their physical play epitomized who they are.

Minna connects well with the children she photographs, even before the first shots, by playing with them and discovering what interests them. They become comfortable, and she gets ideas. Many of her ideas come because she sees the details in abstract things. “We are capable of seeing things more than we do.”

She remembers driving down a road, after she began her first photography class in college, and she could see it. Her perspective had changed and the details of life surrounded her. Seeing more comes by learning more. Minna is always learning whether it is by taking photography classes, learning from others’ work or evaluating her own photography.

Some of her favorite photographers and the blogs she reads regularly are Deb Schwedhelm, Jonathan Canlas, Pinkle Toes Photography, Marilia Destot, Amy Furstenau, Christina Domingues, Irene Suchocki, Karen Rusten and Rachele Valdez.

Her photography goals aren’t driven by money but a desire to learn as much as she can and get better. “I have learned how to think in a new way, have better ideas and open up my mind.”

She was a purist for a long time, using only film. She likes the look that film and photo paper give to a photograph. Black and whites, especially, have a classic look that is harder to achieve digitally. The work of Jon Canlas, a photographer who believes “film is not dead,” inspires her with the images he gets straight out of the camera.

Still, Minna made the investment and switched to digital when she started Miriam Lovell Photography and began selling photo cards. Her reasons—less expensive in the long run, easier, better photography, instant gratification, and an instant learning tool. “With film you don’t know what you’ll have until you get the film back.”

While she uses a digital SLR (see the side column of her photography blog for equipment particulars), she promises there is a lot you can do with a $150 point-and-shoot camera. In addition to learning technical things like the rule of thirds and experimenting with different points of view, “your idea makes up so much of your photograph.”

Sometimes all things come together for the perfect shoot. Her dream photo shoot was at a beach house with extended family. She laid a white comforter on the couch and shot pictures of a photogenic 9-month-old baby boy. He was in the mood. The light was great from a skylight in the ceiling. And, technically, she was “on.”

Certainly, more than chance brought these elements together. This talented photographer pictured it.

Focus on Details, Part II is the second in a series of posts from an interview on portraiture with Minna Dyer of Miriam Lovell Photography. View photo cards and her gallery of photographs at her website. Learn from her regular photo assignments on her photography blog.

Part III will be published on Wednesday, June 4, at TJ Hirst.com. Her images are copyrighted by Miriam Lovell Dyer of Miriam Lovell Photography. Images cannot be used without express written permission.

“Most people stand back and try to get most of the body. When you focus on what you don’t normally pay attention to—hands, feet, eyes—the details show different things.”

Minna Dyer looks for the unexpected details in individuals when she shoots portrait photography. The challenge comes not only in seeing those details but in getting the person to open up and allow her in to capture them.

Her most photographed subject is her daughter, Hannah. She probably has 30,000 photos of her. “She is the person most used to having the camera in her face. I’ll take her out and get 100 photographs of her, easy.”

Hannah opens up. But one day she didn’t. She was hiding behind her hair. When Minna took some shots, she remembers thinking, “She didn’t want me to do that.”

She uncovered more than the detail of Hannah’s eye, it was the look in her eye—or even more importantly, the emotion it conveyed.

“We have so many different expressions and emotions, but they are not always noticeable. I can see something in someone that they might not regularly show. I find things to draw it out. Usually, when someone lets themselves shine, it unfolds. If I can capture that, then it’s there. Photography captures a moment in time and freezes it.”

Minna’s artistic eye developed in her childhood watching her own mother paint and draw, then copying her and “trying to do what she did.” Confident that art was to be a part of her life and her learning, she pursued several forms in high school and college and graduated with a degree in art education. Even though her only regularly-paid art job was as a chalkboard artist in the Seattle area, she continued developing her skills.

She later moved to New York with her husband. After her second daughter’s birth, she needed a creative outlet and started the business side of her photography, Miriam Lovell Photography.

“The artist in me needs to create something. I love to create beautiful and interesting images. We all need something to accomplish and achieve. That’s what photography is for me.”

Her creative process doesn’t just begin or end with the photograph. For example, when she has a family photo session, she meets and talks with them first, developing a personal rapport and trying to understand their interests and desires. Then, she researches and plans the location and possible shots. Following the shoot itself is editing, proofing, and organizing. She sets up a web gallery for them to view and choose prints, and she may design a layout for a book of photographs.

But the photo shoot is the fun part, even when the unexpected happens. One of her best shoots was with a 5-year-old boy in Brooklyn Bridge Park—in the pouring rain. He played for the camera in way that he might not in a group. Minna invited his mother, who hadn’t planned to be photographed, to gather the leaves with him, and she shot a series of mother and son laughing and playing together in unplanned moments.

The wonderful moments of emotion may be fun, loving, tender, silly, touching, beautiful, or reflective, as the natural light of the window revealed during a session with a friend facing a difficult time. In all, the details express life, and “photographs capture the essence of life.”

Focus on Details, Part I is the first in a series of posts from an interview on portraiture with Minna Dyer of Miriam Lovell Photography. View photo cards and her gallery of photographs at her website. Learn from her regular photo assignments on her photography blog.

Part II will be published on Wednesday, May 28, at TJ Hirst.com. Her images are copyrighted by Miriam Lovell Dyer of Miriam Lovell Photography. Images cannot be used without express written permission.

Michelle’s feet swelled overnight on the first day of the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk. In the morning she could barely fit into her second pair of shoes, New Balance cross trainers. If only she had thought to bring extra shoes to wear to the showers for some relief. She walked another 20 miles that day with her toes squeezed together in those too-tight shoes. A long toenail cut into another toe. And somewhere along the route through the city streets of Minneapolis, blood seeped through the mesh and covered the top of her shoes.

Years earlier Michelle made a goal for herself in a women’s health class at college. The instructor asked each student to set a 3-month goal, a 1-year goal, and a 5-year goal. At the same time, she sought to know her mother who had died from breast cancer when Michelle was 10 and learn more about herself in the process.

She kept asking herself, “My mom died so long ago. Why does it still affect me now?” Her answer, “Because she had been gone so long, I needed to find her. In finding her, I was finding myself.”

Her 3-month goal was to train for and run in the 5k Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in her community. “I wanted to make a connection with this disease that took her life and do something physically constructive,” she said. She also ran the 5k the next year and then discovered the Breast Cancer 3-Day walk.

Her mom became sick at a young age and died at 36. Michelle was approaching that age, herself, when she committed to participate in the 3-Day. Even though she struggled to raise the $2000 to participate and find someone to walk with her, she persevered—in the fund raising and in her heartfelt desire to connect with her mom.

Michelle worried she wouldn’t have the right equipment. She had a good pair of New Balance shoes that fit comfortably. But she needed two pairs. At a local department store, she bought a second pair—cross-training shoes by Rykä. In hindsight, she wished she had purchased shoes a ½ size bigger than she needed.

The organizers made sure the walk was as comfortable as possible, providing encouragement and nourishment at stations along the way and in the tent camps at night. The food satisfied. And the volunteers served it with humor and positive comments that kept her going. Survivors shared their stories to motivate walkers.

The walk itself was not the challenge. The challenge came for Michelle in walking through the pain in her feet, aggravated by her shoes. Organizers had encouraged walkers to bring Vaseline, apparently to use between their toes. Michelle thought her Chapstick was what she needed, and she developed blisters underneath her toenails. “My feet hurt so bad. If I stopped, I wondered if I would be able to start again.”

Michelle put on her Rykä shoes on the third morning of the walk. They widened at the top around the toes, giving her the extra space she needed to complete the final day of the 60-mile walk. Having never found someone to join her in the walk, she walked on her own. She met interesting women along the way. Some with a connection to places she had lived. Others with stories of their own. All there for the same cause.

“It’s a strange thing; that disease had already taken her life,” Michelle said about her mom. “In walking, I wasn’t going to fund medicine to help her get better. But I felt a physical need to work some of that emotion out, to let out some of those hard and sad feelings.”

The last 20 miles wound through the old avenues of St. Paul, past neighborhoods of large, beautiful older homes and through parks with ponds or lakes. She completed her 3-Day 60-mile walk at the Minnesota State Capital building. “Physically, I could have kept walking, if my feet would have allowed it.”

Even at the end, the pain continued. Michelle’s feet burned and tingled. All the participants waited for every last person to finish walking. Waiting for the others prolonged it. She later lost several toenails, which she even considered selling on eBay to raise more money to benefit breast cancer research.

Healing came. The walk was a stepping stone to later experiences when she felt her mom close. “I felt that I was growing more whole as a person, which is how I see her.”

She still owns and wears the Rykä shoes that she wore to the finish line, even though she has worn a hole through the bottom. “If I could ever find another pair of shoes like those ones, I’d buy a bunch of them.”

This post is an entry in the Scribbit May Write-Away Contest.

Rabbi Morris Zimbalist and Bishop Paul Hirst conclude their conversation on similarities in their respective congregation. Read previous entries here.

Rabbi Zimbalist is the rabbi of Montebello Jewish Center in Montebello, NY. Bishop Hirst is the bishop of the Brainerd Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Brainerd, MN.

In what ways do you participate in the larger community?

Rabbi Zimbalist: I am currently the President of the Rockland County Board of Rabbis, a group consisting of all non-Orthodox rabbis in the county. I am a trustee of the Holocaust Museum and Study Center in Rockland County. I am involved with the Jewish Federation, a member of the admissions committe for the Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the chaplain for the local fire department. I am a former member of the editorial board for the Rockland Jewish Reporter and the former chaplain for the Jewish War Veterans of the State of New York.

Bishop Hirst: Personally, I’ve been a board member and president of a local arts group. However, because of church responsibilities, I’ve had to give some of that up. We are encouraging our members to reach out and participate as they are able in the community. We’re working on a community blood drive with the Red Cross this spring.

What is the most difficult aspect of your job?

Rabbi Zimbalist: Trying to please everyone. Facing every interpersonal interaction with a sense of uncertainty as to whether or not I am going to be able to help or guide someone with whatever questions or concerns they may be facing.

Bishop Hirst: Knowing how to reach those who, at one time, felt the Spirit and were participants but now, for all sorts of reasons, are not. They aren’t receiving and feeling the blessings that can be theirs.

Church discipline is also a difficult. Imposing consequences on others for their actions and choices is not pleasant. But there is often joy with it, too, as people repent and return to God.

What is the best part of your responsibilities?

Rabbi Zimbalist: Helping people through the more difficult life experiences - pastoral visits in hospitals, comforting and counseling families at a time of loss, taking care of the final needs of those who have passed away. When I do those things, I really feel that I am helping people, particularly helping them through a time of crisis, and I also feel like all of those efforts are appreciated.

Bishop Hirst: Interviewing the children before their baptisms. Watching people rise to the challenge.

What has surprised you, either in a positive or negative way, about your role as clergy?

Rabbi Zimbalist: I am most surprised that it is so incredibly hard to motivate volunteers to do anything, and that people look to me for more than spiritual, ritual or religious things.

Bishop Hirst: The mantle of the office is, in some ways, heavier than I anticipated. I’m also amazed, that while I’m not really a different person since being called and set apart, that people respect the office. I’m still the same, but the office I hold is sacred and people respond to that more than me personally. I was counseled when I was called to put my own “stamp” on the ward. I’ve been surprised how difficult this is, too.

I’ve also been surprised at how few middle-of-the-night calls I’ve received, so far. But I’ve also been told by others that it takes about a year for the members to start trusting, so I may have some more interesting experiences to look forward to, too.

To you, what is the most meaningful part of your faith?

Rabbi Zimbalist: The most meaningful part of my faith is constantly trying to grow closer to God in all that I do, both as a rabbi and as a Jew.

Bishop Hirst: My personal relationship with Christ. This relationship grows through living the covenants I have made with him, which covenants teach me to love my fellowman (Matt 22:36-40).

In Conclusion

This conversation has mostly illustrated that regardless of religious identification, the clergy and their families experience many similar joys and frustrations, and that practicing faith, teaching faith, and encouraging others to have faith is very challenging.

On a personal level, Alison said:

This conversation has taken me back to many memories of our adolescent friendship. The J family was much more religious than my family, and I remember going to church with you on Sunday mornings and sitting in your kitchen doing homework while your family had family prayer time in the next room. I never felt strange or out-of-place as a Jew in these situations. It never even occurred to me that maybe others would feel that way in that situation! It is that same religious respect that I think is reflected throughout this “e-conversation.” I think we can only hope that our children will grow up with those same views towards others who practice different religions, even as they live very different religious lives

Reconnecting in this way with Alison and Morrie reminded Teresa of her interest in and respect of their Jewish faith back in high school. Teresa said:

The rich symbolism and history appealed to me then and it still does. I teach a religion class about the Old Testament to high school students. The personal connection with the practices of a modern Jewish family enriched that study and the class discussions with the LDS youth. And in our own family, as Paul said, we learned some new interesting things about Judaism that we didn’t know before.

Overall, we have been amazed at the similarities this conversation uncovered. Most of all, our goals seem to be the same—that is to have our members draw nearer to God through living the commandments and their covenants.