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glort
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 p.2 #15 · A shoot I'll never forget. | |
Thank You all for the kind and somewhat unexpected replies.
I don't know if my motives for sharing this are as community based and pure or really being selfish and just wanting to get something off my chest and maybe just in some odd way, pay tribute to this amazing woman and her family and make others take a moment to count their blessings.
I often feel sometimes we get so busy with things we think are important, we forget how lucky we are just for the simplest most basic things we take for granted.
I was a bit cut up when I posted that last night. After a good sleep, I find I'm not feeling much better about it but is was nice to read that I am not the only one moved by these people.
My friend has been telling me about his woman for some time now of her ups and downs and that she wasn't even supposed to see last Christmas. It's bad enough when you hear about these things, it's something different to even spend a few hours with the people though. It's playing on my mind now that one day soon he'll ring or drop by and tell me she is gone.
I have lost close and dearly loved family members to cancer and I know what a sinister, cruel and heartless thing it is, but to be reminded of it yesterday and think of those kids loosing their mum and seeing her pain at knowing she won't be around for them as they grow up, was something you'd do nearly anything you could to prevent.
I don't want this to be taken as political, rather a statement about mankind but there is something way off center when we spend money on weapons and all manner of other needless and stupid things instead of just saying " Right, we are going to fix this" and devote whatever it takes to do so. When that's' done we move onto the the next thing and fix that to end the pain and suffering it causes. If we really got serious about it, I reckon these things wouldn't take long at all with a united and no holds barred effort.
I don't want to put a picture up at this time at least as I feel it just wouldn't be appropriate or in fact what the mother would want. She is incredibly brave but doesn't want to be thought of as sick or have a fuss made. I get the feeling she would have no problem with me posting this story here, as long as she is anonymous so that is the way I'll keep it.
I have been sick for a while myself but this morning I printed a pic of the family and stuck it over my desk where I have just a few photos that are mainly family and meaningful to me. I put it there to remind myself I'm not really sick, I have nothing compared to this woman and I should wake up to myself and get off my backside and be thankful I can still walk around upright and have a foreseeable future to look forward to. No matter how bad I feel in the future, I can look at that pic and know what being sick really is and count myself lucky I'm bloody well off by comparison.
This is the second thing this week that has upset me I have come across in Photography.
I started an onsite event business about 6 months ago and I have been doing a lot of work with Pony clubs. There is one mother there that has been a great customer and spends a lot with us. My wife was talking to the mother at the last event we did and found out the girl is 15 and going blind. She only has 10% sight left and apparently the downhill curve is pretty steep. No one knows how she can still ride and make the fences for the showjumping which is her favorite riding discipline.
As it turned out, I had just been talking to the girl and some of her friends and thought what a great bunch of kids they were. She a lovely girl, smart, polite and seems wise ahead of her years. She's also a good looking girl in a very warm, friendly way with a cheeky smile. I was pretty upset when my wife told me what is going on with her.
On the weekend I got talking to the mother who told me the daughter had got some tests back during the week and she was loosing her sight at a much faster rate than predicted and would probably be totally blind in another 6 to 12 months. The mother and daughter are brave about this, I was glad I was wearing my sun glasses so the mother couldn't see my tears.
When I saw the daughter come out for her ride a little earlier, I got on the walkie talkie and had told my other shooter to get all the shots he could of her ride and even just on her horse before and after.
The mother came over to the trailer and my son pointed out a really excellent shot my shooter had got of the daughter. The mother wanted to know how big we could blow it up. She pointed to an advertising poster I have which is about 40x60 and asked if we could do it that size. I checked the image and it was tack sharp and basically spot on so I said that wouldn't be a problem. She said great do that and could I write the size down so she could organize a frame and measure a spot on the girls bedroom to hang it.
She wants it so big so her daughter might be able to see it. She loves her riding and the pics I do but the mother says she really dosent think she can make much out even on their huge TV she puts them on. We had a chat and then almost as an after thought, she asked how much the print would be. I did her cost price on the print because I can't bring myself to profit from someone else s suffering. I don't give a rats if that's good business or not, It's my business and I'll run it the way I think is right and and that was it.
The mother also went through the pics and ordered a CD. We normally put 5 images on the disk but she said there were a lot she liked and if she wrote them out could we do her a deal on them? My 14 yo son who runs the computers and printing in the trailer for me brought a disk over to her later and announced her list was in the cover but he hadn't bothered with it, he had just put all the pics we had taken on there. She wanted to know how much that was and he looked a bit puzzled and told her the standard price.
After all this woman must have been through and has on her mind, she started insisting that she owed us more. When my son said no, she went over to my wife who also gave her the standard price. I happened to wander over at about that time and she told me about the disk and what they said and asked me how much and I said the same thing.
I thought it a bit ironic that she was obviously a bit taken aback and touched by this insignificant thing in the face of what her daughter is going through. As I said, If we couldn't give her daughter all the pics for her to enjoy while she could, what sort of mongrels would we be?
All my family is a bit touched by this Girl and the kids obviously have a realization they don't normally have about anything about what this girl is going through. My son told the woman if she wanted the pics from any events in the future, to make sure she came and told him when her daughter was riding and he would get all our shooters off what they were doing and were ready to photograph her rides and he would put all the shots on the on the disk for her at the standard price and not to bother arguing. That nearly brought a tear to my eye as well as I was very proud of him for that.
Again the mother was a bit surprised but maybe it's as much for us as it is for the daughter. We all feel for her and if we can do some small thing to give her some joy to balance all she will miss out on, how could you not?
A friends elderly mother has been blind since she was 16 and I thought it was some bad joke at first when she told me her mother loves photos. I sat there apparently with my mouth open until my friend told me that although her mother can't see them, she can show them to friends. Maybe one day this girl will be showing her kids the pics I have taken of her and will be able to talk to her them about a time in her life when things were different for her.
I know this girls plight has made my kids stop and give thanks for things they normally take for granted and also my wife and I that we are spared the pain that this girls parents so unfairly have to suffer.
On a selfish note, I hope to heck I get to shoot some happier things soon. This week I have had a couple of things I won't ever forget but I can't help feeling they are for the entirely wrong reasons.
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| Oct 22, 2009 at 10:50 PM |
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