“Open Swim, Camp Hill, Pittsburgh 2007,” by Ross Mantle. Via Verve Photo.

Verve Photo posts generally feature a single image, a short piece of text on the photographer, and a short piece of text by the photographer discussing the photograph.

It’s an excellent compromise between the sort of photoblog which just throws an image at you sans context and the sort which forces you to sit down for twenty or thirty minutes and take notes. If photoblogs were food, I’d say Verve is a tasty but healthy snack. Like baby carrots.

There are a lot of wonderful things about this particular photograph — Mantle talks about the colors of the woman’s bathing suit and the red paint, for example, as well as capturing the moment when the two girls come into the frame.

What strikes me most about it, though, are the fantastic differences between the nuances of stance and gesture of the woman and the children. One sees here that age and youth are not just matters of age and appearance. Our old or young body conditions the ways we move in the world, not just how we appear in it.