G and ReRe – Children’s photography

I love Christmas as it is an opportunity to catch up with family, and I may be bias but I have a wonderful family. Growing up on a family farm meant that all the cousins spend a lot of time together. We played together, worked together and argued together, and getting back together is a highlight of my year. It seems to be becoming a tradition that I love to photograph the cousins kids at Christmas. It is wonderful to see them growing up and watch their personalities develop. These are two amazing little girls of one of my older cousins. The oldest has been nicknamed ReRe while the youngest is referred to as G. I hope you enjoy these images as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Lester Lock

I don’t spend much time talking about my family, but on this occasion I am going to break my silence. I break this for one simple reason, to give homage to my grandfather who passed away over this last weekend. Lester or Papa as he was know by the grandkids lived a long and full 95 years. I can’t imagine the changes that he would have seen in the world since 1916 but I know beyond a doubt that he had a hand in changing the world for the people of Papua. You see Papa spent a large amount of his life as a missionary to the people of Papua. I know from conversations I have had with people from the Solomon Islands and Papua that he was well respected and seen as a man of great integrity.

Lester was actually schooled in Papua as as a result was able to speak no less that 8 languages from around the Solomon’s and Papua. He spend a large amount of his time translating english in Motu. Some of my earliest memories of Papa are of him sitting by his type writer translating page by page. The hours that he spent doing this and the number of books that he has translated is too numerous to count.

This post is not about sadness but rather about honouring a man committed to the service of others. So to my grandfather, Bamahuta.

These images were taken of Lester back on 2007 just before he turned 91.