Fulfilling Use of Old Photos

General Discussion
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I’d like to share this with everyone.

Like all of you I have many thousands of photographs. They are a mixture of what I consider “my art” and event shooting. I don’t do any fee based photography but I do use my gift to help out with my Parish events and Knights of Columbus and most any fraternal and/or service organization that asks me to do them a favor.

Just recently my wife and I visited a friend that was battling cancer and her life was coming to an end. During the visit the husband asked me if I could put together an array of photos to be used during the wake and funeral. We left the home and learned a short while later that she had passed.

On Saturday, I spent the day going through my catalog system pulling out many photos of her doing volunteer work around the church and with some of the organizations she had volunteered to help.

Because I always shoot in raw, I was able to take some of the photos that were slightly under or overexposed and adjust them to a suitable image. I used many of the Topaz filters to enhance them further and came up with a dozen photos that my wife placed in frames.
One in particular was of her and her husband at her 60th birthday part.

Today I met with the husband and provided the photos and had to embrace him as he got quite emotional looking at them. His gratitude is something I will personally cherish.

I’ve often thought, what the heck do I do with all these event photos. With some minor exception most people don’t even ask for any of the photos and I never know how much they are viewed on the various websites. This weekend I was fulfilled with satisfaction that my work has actually made a difference to someone and that my efforts do have some meaning.

I hope this doesn’t sound like bragging or patting myself on the back. I don’t usually toot my own horn and I’m not trying to do that here. Just saying that our efforts have impact either passively or direct.

I think I can shoot these events with a much better attitude now.

Thanks for letting me get up on my soapbox.

Harry

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We often do the same…at one time giving out our webpage URL on a business card to anyone whose picture we had taken so they might see them. If a copy was requested, I’d clean it up and send it. There have been times when people specifically asked to be photographed and I’d be sure that what I sent back to them was something that they’d like. I did it quite freely and enjoyed doing it. When I noticed that, more often than not, the recipient didn’t bother to acknowledge that they’d received a portrait quality image I’d spent hours on, I became less generous. I’m thinking that with the proliferation of cell phone pictures and “selfies” they didn’t have a clue what went into them.

These days, I’ll usually agree to a request to restore an old photo and always get pleasure from their responses. I’d say it is akin to your feelings on doing something nice for someone.

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Lovely, beautiful gesture, Harry. No bragging or patting yourself on the back about it. You are just a lovely person.

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Yes, Elle, I would have to agree, it is akin to your feelings.

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Thank you.

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Thank you, Eleanore.

7

This was a really touching story, I am very glad you were able to do that.

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Thank you, Ken.