You Just Never Know
by Nicole Freire

Most often, when I sit down at the computer to write up my Sunday column, I feel as if I'm flying blind. I'll write about Topic A, and the column will barely break 300 hits. I'll write about Topic B, and suddenly I'm over 1000. I say this not to make you feel that I'm looking for massive hits, but to say this; "What do you people want?"

My mother says it's the photographs. My father says it's the writing. Ed likes both. Last week, my husband said of that Sunday's column - "Well, that's just putting up pictures of books and quoting from them". And my answer was this, "What is your point?"

Sometimes my article won't have a picture to go with it and I'm forced to find one to fit. Sometimes an article demands lots of pictures, and I have to squish some words in somehow.

Maybe this is why big newspaper columnists usually just have their headshot and their name at the top of their columns.

Back to last week's column. To me, it was just as revealing as any other article I've written but it wasn't read as often as the one I wrote about me gaining weight.

This is why I find it difficult to write (or speak) coherently about books or movies that I love. Sometimes the words just don't come.

I don't have many words to accompany this article. What I do have are lots of images.

There are two books that I spent many hours with as a child - and I still do, even as an adult. The Family of Man, and The Family of Children. These books of photographs affected me just as strongly as any book I ever read.

I've selected a few favorite images from each book, ones that continue to amaze me as much as they did the first time I saw them.

Click here to see photos from The Family of Man and The Family of Children.

I hope that by sharing them with you, a greater understanding of what I write and who I am will make more sense - why some articles have more pictures and less words and why some have tons of words and a token picture.

I've also included some photographs of my very own personal versions of the two books. I'm not giving them titles or captions; I'm just posting them raw, like the other images.

Maybe they will resonate with you as much as they do for me. Or maybe you'll think, "Didn't she have anything to say this week?" To which I'll answer, "Yes, I do. And I did".

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Nicole Freire is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Barbara.