POTD 2018/067. Lin Remington: A Mother's Day Portrait

Today is both International Women's Day and Throwback Thursday. So to celebrate women today, I'm going with my mom!

This portrait originally ran on Mother's Day 2015 (May 13, 2015), and was taken 3 days earlier. The original text follows.

"'What's that? What did you say? Have a good day— Oh yes, Happy New Year. Yes, of course. How stupid of me. You too. Happy New Year.'

"(There is the sound of a door closing and the room is dark.)

"Did they say Happy New Year? Well, maybe. I suppose that's one way of putting it.

"I'm lying here in bed in the Hartford Hospital. Phyllis is lying twelve feet from me. We're in a two-bed room on the sixth floor of a building—part of the Hartford Hospital complex. It is about 10 p.m. and our 3-11 p.m. shift has just said good night. Lin Remington—her name. Yes, she came New Year's Eve night. I told her to go home early—in time for the great midnight moment. Just damned nice of her to come at all. I agree.

"Oh, they've taken great care of us, our whole crew. Lin and Gail—Bernice—Sue—Kathy—Diane and Marsha and Rhada really put themselves out. Rhada even came Christmas Eve night. So generous. Because the others, they all have kids and it's the Christmas-New Year's holiday. What? What are we doing here?

"Oh, didn't you hear? I ran into a telephone pole. Yes, got across the causeway from Fenwick to Saybrook Point. Went about, oh say, fifty yards—then either looked up or down or away or who knows what I did. We ran head-on into a telephone pole—right square bang head-on." — Katharine Hepburn writing on my mother in her autobiography "Me: Stories of My Life" (Hepburn, Katharine. "Happy New Year." Me: Stories of My Life. New York: Knopf, 1991.)

I've taken so many portraits, but never one of my mother or my father. It was a glaring omission and I wanted to remedy it, and that was the main purpose of my recent visit home to Suffield, Connecticut this past weekend. Appropriately I took this, my first portrait ever of my mother, on Mother's Day. It was also fitting that I should do it there on the property where my parents built their home and raised my sisters Sharon Remington Chagnot and Amy Remington Seiler, and me.

I may be biased, but she's a wonderful and beautiful woman, and as Kate Hepburn said of her above, she's pretty damn nice too. I just hope my portrait does her justice.

1/5 sec at f/16, ISO 200
Canon EOS 5D Mark III with Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens at 200mm

I hope you enjoy today's J.W. Remington Photographics' Photo of the Day for March 8, 2018!

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