Some describe life as a tapestry of well-woven choices. Some might call life a journey of meandering pathways. Some might say it’s a song whose melody rises and falls in harmonious pitches and daily dynamics. Veda Gonzalez might refer to life as a portrait of varying lights and shadows, creating a deeper story with subtle shades and tones. For Veda is a photographer who tells a story with her camera and captures a real life in print. She takes a living, breathing moment of emotion and feeling, and suspends it in two-dimension. She freezes time, so the memory can come alive again later, and whisper across the ages a hint of remembrance that recreates a shadow of living moments from the past. But, to create a portrait, as with a life, you have to begin with the most basic elements of light and dark. In
the ‘old days’ light was captured in the blackness of a void (camera), to create a reflection on film, which when exposed to a caustic solution in the ‘dark room’ revealed a negative of an image which was then reversed onto paper and printed. Displayed thus, light has become an image that can be studied and interpreted by a casual observer to develop an infinite number of meanings. But only when you meet the truly flesh and blood model can you hold them and hug them, and get a sense the whole person. Sometimes when we meet a new person, it’s like looking at a photograph. We see their outline and their form. We assess and make assumptions from their hair style and manner of dress, and the shadows of expression that flit across their countenance, but our casual observance is only glancing at a metaphorical photograph of sorts. Until we grasp their hand, or been warmed
by their smile, or felt the breath of their voice, or been enveloped in the wealth of their embrace, we’ve only taken their picture, and not truly let them develop into. . . alive. Once we know the real person, we’re no longer content with just the photograph. Only a chosen few are privileged to know the real woman, the model who produced the photograph of the person we know as Veda Gonzalez, who might appear to be average in some ways, quirky in others, and completely extraordinary in the most unusual of usual ways. I hope you take a moment to gaze upon a portrait of the real flesh and blood lady behind the image, this portrait captured with words like she captures moments of emotion in film. Today, Veda lives with her four little women in the quiet country of the Ozarks, where one daughter trains horses, one designs original historical fashions, another creates custom jewelry, and the fourth is a shepherdess. But that is just one snapshot of an incredible woman. Only if you flip through the scrapbook of her life, can you capture a more complete view -more than a silhouette – a panorama of the many views of Veda Gonzalez, taken from different angles and perspectives.
Many of the pictures contain images of her children, for that is where her heart has expressed itself most often in the past few years. On each baby photo you can see a face bearing a resemblance to their earthly parents, yet stamped with the image of the Creator on its heart. And as they grow and come more into focus, we see the spirit of their mother emerging onto their countenance, as she molds their hearts to bear the image of that Heavenly Father, for she knew that her first mission was to raise up and train godly seed. But that original picture she treasured in her heart has come alive into a new work of art, a portrait as unique as her dreams for them. As you look at the pictures of her children, you see a more complete picture of the mother and the Father. One picture shows her oldest daughter, Alyssa, her long brown hair blowing in the wind, as she trains horses in the pasture. She uses the John Lyons method, which transfers to either English or Western riding. Alyssa just passed her ACE exam, and is now a certified physical trainer, who loves to help people get in shape physically. She currently teaches several classes at the local YMCA. Veda takes great joy in watching Alyssa embrace her values and grow into a godly woman with an entrepreneurial spirit.
Who is that girl in the black and white photo with her braids wound around her head, serving food to the Confederate soldier? There she is again, looking demure in a Colonial dress, complete with apron, shawl and cap. She resembles that fantasylike girl with flowing locks walking through a green forest dressed in a Renaissance gown. It’s the same girl, strolling through the centuries, for it’s Sara, who designs and creates heirloom costumes and historical gowns; you can see her custom gowns at www. ensemblesofthepast.com. She started her own company, and sells the gowns on the internet, all while being a keeper of her home. This picture is coming into focus from an earlier image Veda held onto, as she endeavored to raise her daughters to have marketable skills and experience so that they could earn money without even leaving the home. Someday Sara will surely use her own
children to model the adorable gowns she’s sure to design, but those pictures will have to wait to fill the later pages of the album. Daughter number three, Ana, likes to make jewelry, and sells her jewelry at a local flea market. You can find her on Etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/ ElegantAccentsbyAna You might see her earrings and hatpins in some of the pictures on Sara’s website, too. Ana makes elegant jewelry, and why not? That describes Ana – even when she has to be the ‘guy’ when the girls push back the furniture and dance. Someone has to, in this house of women, if the ladies want to hone their ballroom dancing, or form a line for English Country Dancing, or do an impromptu swing dance. Noemi, another rare soul, a beauty waiting to develop from the pages of
girlhood to young lady, raises Katahdin hair sheep, (which are bred to provide meat, and look more like goats because of their hair that sheds instead of wool that is sheared). Noemi started with two sheep and now has twelve breeding ewes, a ram and three lambs that she still needs to sell from spring. Her sheep operation pays for itself, gives her animals to love and care for, and provides a little supplemental income. Someday this flock might provide extra income for her family, while she works at home. In this house of strong women, there is always the unspoken longing for the men who are not present in person, but still nod a greeting from their portraits on the wall. You’ll want to turn the page and see the pictures of her two sons in their military uniforms. Aron serves in the Army in Afghanistan, and hopes to receive an engineering degree from his father’s alma mater, the University of Texas. Her oldest son, Tomas, served in the Marines in Iraq, and currently works for the Forest Service and is halfway through his degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, where his father taught for ten years.
photo of Xavier, beloved husband and father, who looks down on his little women with a fatherly beam of pride in the photo that must fill the place of the man who lies yonder in restful repose in the family cemetery.
This picture was taken in his work clothes, and is how the children remember him from the days when he took this rugged piece of property, felled the trees, and built a cozy home for them. Even from the past, like a treasured face in a locket has the power to preserve fidelity a world away, he frames their lives today with strength and dignity and honor and pride.
All of these photos give life and depth to One photo that deserves a prominent the woman we know as Veda Gonzalez, and precious pedestal of honor is the and yet, there is a whole section of
pages in the album we haven’t yet seen.
Another daring photo shows her at the One picture would show her in cap controls of a Cessna airplane as she and gown at Baylor University and studied to earn her pilot’s license back the Brooks Institute of Photography, in 1973, or the Cherokee she flew later Although she values her education, she’s because they were more fun. So fun, not sure she’s earned back in income that Veda went on to earn her instrument the cost of those degrees, and that’s one rating before flying got too expensive . reason she encourages her daughters . . after a half dozen babies came along. to develop marketable skills that will allow them to be entrepreneurial so Another picture will show her dressed that when they become mothers, they in her wet suit at Zion National Park can work at home and mother their in Utah. She meets up with two of children at the same time. Veda knows her friends each year, and they spend from experience how this works, a week doing something physically because many nights, she bundled the challenging that requires some training. children for a nighttime adventure at a This day they hiked upstream, and then chiropractor’s office, while she used an floated on their backs all the way back inner room as a darkroom to develop to the park. film while the girls slept on the tables. Or maybe you’ll notice the photo of her biking Europe in 1980, or fooling with her chickens, or reading, or cutting paths through her woods that were hit by a tornado in 2003, or building that pole barn a couple years ago, all photos that show the incredible depth and “It was kind of like tubing, but without tubes because our wet suits varied interests of this were very buoyant. It was beyond words beautiful floating along with the sounds of the water and birds and the towering canyon red mulch-faceted woman.. walls going straight up from the water’s edge.”
The ladies enjoy dancing of all sorts, especially dances that require historically accurate gowns. All of the gowns in this portrait are handmade by the girls. Go to www.ensemblesofthepast.com for more gown designs by Sara Gonzalez.
Flip the page and see the shot of her with a Savage .300 deer rifle, handed down to her husband from a favorite uncle. She hunts deer and turkey on her land, and occasionally has to deal with a pesky predator. . . like the skunk she found in the hen house one night.
association, she took an arms training course. She even traveled to Nevada to Frontsight (www.frontsight.com), a fantastic facility for arms training, to take a four-day defensive handgun course.
But, even though Veda has enjoyed Veda has owned guns since she was and excelled in physical activities and young (she’s from Texas after all), but sports, she is a beautiful and elegant after her husband, Xavier died, she woman. As you look over the pictures realized that she was now the protector in the album of a life worth living, your of her family. In addition to writing eyes are quickly drawn to the portrait a trust, and joining a legal defense of a matron with her flock gathered
around her looking like they stepped from the ballroom of the Old South. Confederate gray, of course. And one picture you can’t avoid looking at, to see a resemblance of who Veda is today, is the sixtieth anniversary photo of her parents, who moved to Southern Missouri in the year 2000 to be near their grandchildren.
trail with her, one day at a time – at eight to twelve miles per hour, so she can enjoy the view. Or maybe it will be a daring photo of her back at Frontsight, learning to shoot a machine gun hanging out of a helicopter on her eightieth birthday. Most surely, it will include snapshots of little women pregnant with life, and babies who bear a resemblance to the overall-clad man, who will be cherished through his picture. Like a window to the memories of the past that warm the present, this picture of this grandfather will continue to inspire a glowing ember in the lives of his grandchildren.
One can’t help but wonder what the future will bring for this amazingly average woman, who has amassed an extraordinary photo album of memories and experiences from simple skills and daily devotion. If we turned the pages to the blank section, what photos will leave rectangular fade marks on those pages in the years to come? And yet, even after looking at this life told in photos, you still have a twoMaybe she’ll have a snapshot from dimensional subject that can be assessed the biking adventure she longs to take and assumed and deduced and summed on the 225 miles of the Katy trail. She up and ascertained, but to really know wants to find someone to bike the entire the person, you must meet the living, breathing, warm fleshed person. You still don’t know the Veda Gonzalez that I have hugged, and broken bread with, and shared memories of grief and loss with. If you don’t have the opportunity to meet Veda in person, you have to look deep within the photo, to let it speak to your very soul. You have to learn more of the story, and let the story speak to your heart and emotions to really know “Am I fearful? Not at all! Preparedness brings peace.” them.
For example, take this work of art that Veda submitted to her professional lab, and which won a national award. This two-day-old baby is nestled in his father’s helmet, recently arrived home from Afghanistan. Years from now, when a camera might capture the mother of this babe wrinkled and graying, stooped and swaying, the babe turned adult, can you envision her clasping this worn picture to her lips, to her heart? And though you can’t catch this scent from the photo, from this little snippet of paper, a memory will emerge carrying a fragrance, and she will remember the aroma of her newborn, cradled in and absorbing the scent of a man defending his country, the sweet perfume of fidelity, the fragrance of mingled bravery, sacrifice and duty. And it will be a moment that returns as real as the love that fills her heart.
Because a picture taken by Veda Gonzalez, is not just a portrait, but a work of art, capturing the inner essence of the person, taking a threedimensional moment and preserving it forever in a two-dimensional frame. She gifts you with a moment preserved in print to be forever captured in light and shadows. It’s like capturing a memory to be savored in a distant moment yet unseen, as she uses her camera as a tool to capture light and shadow and turn it into memories as skillfully as a refiner’s rasp riffles the marble block into a sculpture. Her camera is a dark room, from which light is excluded, except the light that sketches the shadows of the image. And like a camera, life has a way of creating the most extraordinary individuals when you quietly take off the lens cap, open the shutter, and let the light form an impression of the image of a
life worth living – one photograph at by a microsecond? You are blinking, a time. And though life might force or your “The Son is the some awkward props or settings into mouth is our portraits, we can trust that the Light radiance of God’s will ease the shadows, creating a subtle glory and exact and more blended beauty. Any one picture can’t tell the full story of the complete woman, and even perusing the entire album won’t tell the whole story, for there is a section that is as yet untouched, and there is probably a stack of pictures hidden in a shelf in some forgotten corner, that is still waiting to be shared. And there are some tender moments that are too precious to be displayed, except on a rare occasion when they are viewed in the quiet moments with some private tears. So, for the rest of us, we take this opportunity to embrace the mystery of Veda Gonzalez and celebrate a light captured simply by these photos and words, and a life perfected by the Creator. And what about your own life’s photo album? What do people see when they look at the album of your life? Is it full of perfectly poised meticulously manicured, exquisitely coiffed models in flat photos?
representation of His being. . . “Hebrews 1:3 NIV
misshapen, and you are smiling too much, or your eyes are squinting? Or are your perfect shots ruined by outside influences – the wind blowing hair in your face, the dog running in front of the picture, or that boy holding up rabbit ears or crossing his eyes? Maybe no matter how hard you try to get the perfect family photo, someone spills something on their shirt, or loses a button, messes up their hair or won’t smile, and it makes you feel like a failure.
Maybe you just can’t seem to take a picture that isn’t blurry, and the elements of your life are hazy and out of focus. Do you need help with the basic elements of life so that you can preserve and capture moments of bliss Or are your pictures of the type where the and joy? photographer just missed the best shot
Or is the light fading or blinding in your picture? Do you need to have a proper appreciation and relationship to the Light of the World, so that He softens your life with his proper brilliance and chases the shadows of dark days and sorrowful moments away? Maybe your album is perfectly designed with picture perfect moments, creative captions, your life all cataloged in neat little albums, looking as though it is perfect to the casual observer, but you know the real story behind each illusion. It might look perfect, but it is perfectly staged to conceal the pain of patched up perfection, the illusive facade of eluded dreams?
Or maybe you spent years preserving a lifetime of perfect moments, but it was swept away in a deluge of destruction, and you have nothing left to show for it.
..Lighting still draws my eye like a magnet...”
You don’t feel you have the energy to build better memories, and you are afraid that life for you is an empty album, with nothing to show for the painful journey. Maybe loss has trained you to just treasure the moment, and you dance in freedom like a fanciful fairy, but there’s no documentation – no history to look back on, no album to enjoy., nothing to preserve your free spirit and love of life for the next generation. “What I do find exhilarating is that the art of photography is always the same, no matter how the tools have changed...
Is there one snapshot that seems to define your life? Are you able to step back and allow that
one image to be just one perspective to of life because you don’t understand view the real person that is you? this one moment of a snapshot in time. Don’t let one bad picture, or a blurry image cause you to throw out the entire album. Some of our fashion mistakes, or out-dated spectacles might cause a chuckle, but look beyond that to the real person in the photo. Just know that you are more than any one snapshot. You are a wonderful exquisite woman who “...Composition pleases or excites. Color screams. Classic black & white pleasures. Posing has many amazing facets. You are speaks volumes.” way more than can be captured in a photo, or displayed in an album, or even Do you tend to sum up people based on captured in a work of art. How can you one quick impression? describe Mona Lisa in words? You are more than the word wife, mother, sister, Don’t just take a quick snapshot of the daughter can even convey. Your soul people you encounter. Each person is is full of light and shadows, an image a scrapbook of interesting stories and captured by a Creator who wants to cast hopes and fears. Don’t be content with on you the image of His Son, to be the just a quick glance. reflected glory of Himself imprinted on your soul, so that by looking at There is so much hidden value and you we see an image of Him captured potential in each life, and as we journey and revealed in you – a snapshot through the seasons of a life, we find of the indescribable glory of Him. all of the people who make up the one person we see today – sweet babe, cute toddler, adorable pig-tailed girl, awkward tween, spunky teen, naive bride, weary mom, gracious grandma. We are a work in progress. Don’t dismiss the real flesh and blood models
all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” II Cor 3:18 NIV
And people - people still beg & yet challenge me to capture some little part of their essence, of who they are or why they do the things they do.” -Veda Gonzalez
The radiance of God’s glory has stamped His image on our life to reveal in all the assorted snapshots a portrait of His work in our life.
What images have been burned into your soul by your Father? What Don’t you see? We have been exposed – shadows flit across your features? Will light shining in the dark void, capturing we see a family resemblance of your an image that slowly develops over a Father stamped upon the pages of your lifetime of caustic situations as we are life’s album? being developed into a negative of the original soul – not all it could be, not the being As a camera “Who real, but an image to reveal the real – captures a latent the brightness to reproduce “And have put on image that allows of His glory, His glory the new self, which the photographer to and the and reveal it is being renewed turn the shadow into express image to the world. in knowledge in a viewable image of His person. We are the after the developed the image of its image of . . Hebrews film negative is Creator.” Colossians a soul He 1:3 KJV printed onto photo 3:10 NIV created, paper, allow God’s birthed into radiance to be a physically captured onto your soul, imprinted on frailty of a life that imparts shadows your life, and displayed for the world! and pain to create a more perfected portrait of His grace and glory. As the Light of the World has formed an image on Veda, let His glory be “And we, who with unveiled faces revealed in you! And even though life
has exposed Veda to some harsh chemicals, the resulting image is revealing a more beautiful three-dimensional work of art. And He is the image of when we look back through the album of a life well the invisible God.” lived, we grasp a portrait of the woman from all her Col 1:15 NIV unique angles and views, a life perfected through living well. The two-dimensional begins to become more perfected, begins to come alive, to reveal a real live Proverbs 31 Woman that we long to know better. Check out Veda’s websites. She would love to hear from you! Veda’s Website Veda’s Facebook Page
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