Selfies studded with the glint of middle-school braces. Yearbook portraits posed in school cafeterias converted for a day into photo studios.

We are assembling the same visual timeline for her brother, born four years later. Since that moment, Ella’s life has been a seamless series of visuals. “She … is beautiful.” The last syllable trailed off on the video footage, my grip on the camera wavering with fatherly joy. “She,” I said, my voice high-pitched and cracking with happiness. I remember my wife’s voice - fatigued and faint - asking from across the hospital room if Ella was OK. The image through the viewfinder blurred before the pixels snapped back into focus.

My right finger looped around the top of the camera, toggling the lens of the camera to zoom in and capture a close-up. When I glanced away from the LCD screen of the video camera, I could tell that her first gasps were healthy because the delivery nurse was smiling at Ella while checking her vitals. She lay, eyes clenched in struggle, on a neonatal warming bed in an Overland Park hospital. Seventeen years ago, I pointed a gleaming silver camcorder at my newborn daughter as she alternated breathing and screaming during her first moments of life.

Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas.

Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state.

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