On a summer day in 2016, Jan Johnson of Edina, mother of 10, was babysitting her firstborn grandson Shepherd, along with her grand-dog Phoebe. “We were just sitting in the backyard waiting for pickup,” Johnson says. During the relaxed moment outdoors in the sunshine, Phoebe decided she wanted to play ball. “That dog really likes to play ball,” Johnson says. “You can’t really see it in the photo,” but look closely and you’ll notice that Phoebe “kept bringing her ball to the baby. [The dog] actually has the ball in her mouth. It was so cute because they were looking eye to eye.”
Johnson managed to capture the sweet child/canine moment with her cell phone even though she typically photographs with a Sony 7700. She says her Sony is “a really decent camera but I don’t always take good pictures with it.” She’s taken a few photography classes and sometimes plays around with shooting nature photos since her home backs up to a park-like nature area. She’s even previously submitted a wildlife photo to the Images of Edina photo contest. “It may have been a picture of an eagle,” Johnson says of the submitted nature photo that, even if it was great, must have garnered less attention than Baby’s Backyard Friend.
“One of my kids said I should submit Baby’s Backyard Friend,” Johnson says. “It was near the end of the [photo contest] entry period and I thought it was a bad idea because the [winning] photos are so good.” But Johnson’s daughter encouraged her to enter anyway and was thrilled when the picture won the 2016 Images of Edina Readers’ Choice award.
Be sure to enter your photograph(s) in this year’s Images of Edina photo contest. You never know which images might end up on display at City Hall or published in the pages of Edina Magazine.
