Memory Insurance
You would think that, as a photographer, I would have volumes of images of my family and walls adorned with numerous framed portraits of my children and my parents.
Not so.
There is a single portrait of my mother and there are single portraits of my father. There is a portrait of my wife and me with our children and grandchildren but NONE of myself with my parents or a family portrait.
My sisters and I had all left home and lived in different countries and states for years. There was never a time that we could all get together, but even if there was, we probably would have put it off for some trivial reason. Some of those reasons and excuses are the same ones offered to me now. “Don’t have time”, “can’t afford it”, and the all-purpose excuse, “not at this time”. I think we used those same excuses ourselves. It’s all too hard.
When my father was 92 years old, I decided to make a decent portrait of him with me (it was too late to get me and my parents, my mother had died ten years earlier). This was going to be something to pass on to my children and grandchildren.
My first memory of dad was when I was three years old, steering the Jeep while dad cut burs on the side of the track leading from the farm gate to the house, so I decided to use those elements for our portrait. I arranged to borrow a 1946 Jeep and gained permission from the current owner of the property to photograph at the spot where the track used to be. It was now under crop, but on Google Earth we can still see the faint line where that track had been all those years ago. I planned to position the Jeep on that track and dad and I would be leaning against it with the lake in the background. Dad would be holding a hoe to remove those burs.
I was living in Brisbane and dad lived in a retirement village an eight hour drive away, so it took a bit of planning. It was all arranged, but when I arrived he was too ill to make the 50km drive over some corrugated dirt roads, out to the property.
The final result is that I did not take that photograph. My father died two weeks later and I still don’t have a picture of us together. One of my greatest regrets.
When we are younger, family photos don’t seem to be so important. We are invincible and may not see the need for family portraits, but as someone said to me “whatever your age, it’s all downhill from here”.
I have been photographing people for many years and have often been called upon to print a portrait after yet another farming accident, car accident or, in one case, lightning strike. Had I not taken those photos, the families may have had nothing but small, inadequate snaps of dad or sibling, or worse, have lost the digital files that were on the phone.
The only sure way to preserve digital photographs is to have them properly printed. I call it Memory Insurance. How many times have you heard that after a fire or a flood, the only thing that mattered is that someone was able to save the family photos. A lounge chair or a dining suite can be replaced. To lose an entire collection of family photographs can be devastating.
I have on my phone and on separate hard drives, digital copies of my treasured family portraits, but viewing them on a screen is no substitute for holding a beautifully printed portrait from a treasured family collection.
Not so.
There is a single portrait of my mother and there are single portraits of my father. There is a portrait of my wife and me with our children and grandchildren but NONE of myself with my parents or a family portrait.
My sisters and I had all left home and lived in different countries and states for years. There was never a time that we could all get together, but even if there was, we probably would have put it off for some trivial reason. Some of those reasons and excuses are the same ones offered to me now. “Don’t have time”, “can’t afford it”, and the all-purpose excuse, “not at this time”. I think we used those same excuses ourselves. It’s all too hard.
When my father was 92 years old, I decided to make a decent portrait of him with me (it was too late to get me and my parents, my mother had died ten years earlier). This was going to be something to pass on to my children and grandchildren.
My first memory of dad was when I was three years old, steering the Jeep while dad cut burs on the side of the track leading from the farm gate to the house, so I decided to use those elements for our portrait. I arranged to borrow a 1946 Jeep and gained permission from the current owner of the property to photograph at the spot where the track used to be. It was now under crop, but on Google Earth we can still see the faint line where that track had been all those years ago. I planned to position the Jeep on that track and dad and I would be leaning against it with the lake in the background. Dad would be holding a hoe to remove those burs.
I was living in Brisbane and dad lived in a retirement village an eight hour drive away, so it took a bit of planning. It was all arranged, but when I arrived he was too ill to make the 50km drive over some corrugated dirt roads, out to the property.
The final result is that I did not take that photograph. My father died two weeks later and I still don’t have a picture of us together. One of my greatest regrets.
When we are younger, family photos don’t seem to be so important. We are invincible and may not see the need for family portraits, but as someone said to me “whatever your age, it’s all downhill from here”.
I have been photographing people for many years and have often been called upon to print a portrait after yet another farming accident, car accident or, in one case, lightning strike. Had I not taken those photos, the families may have had nothing but small, inadequate snaps of dad or sibling, or worse, have lost the digital files that were on the phone.
The only sure way to preserve digital photographs is to have them properly printed. I call it Memory Insurance. How many times have you heard that after a fire or a flood, the only thing that mattered is that someone was able to save the family photos. A lounge chair or a dining suite can be replaced. To lose an entire collection of family photographs can be devastating.
I have on my phone and on separate hard drives, digital copies of my treasured family portraits, but viewing them on a screen is no substitute for holding a beautifully printed portrait from a treasured family collection.