Remembering my Dad, the photographer

Remembering my Dad the photographer blog thumbnail.jpg

When I added the blog prompt, "Share a memory of a departed loved one for All Souls Day" my first thought was to share about our beloved family cat Sid (short for Obsidian) who we lost in June of 2020 and I still haven't been able to bring myself to post about him. But when I sat down to write this, I felt the urge to write about my late father, who inspired my love of photography.

I first shared this photo on my WordPress blog back in 2015 for a post about National Photography Month. Dad, in our living room, some time in the mid 1960s

One of the cool things about focusing on my Hive blog for this daily posting challenge is that I don't have to worry about bumming my mother out with posts about my dad (since she follows my WP blog). I know she always appreciates seeing things shared about him, but even after almost twenty years (he passed on New Year's Eve, December 2001 after a six year battle with Alzheimer's), I know it still pokes her in the heart.

The specific memory this photo invokes is when my father gave me my very first "real" (as in, not a point-and-shoot) camera. He was the family photographer and by the time I was in high school, I was also trying my hand at taking pictures a bit more seriously, but not enough to warrant getting a good camera - I mostly used the aforementioned P&S types (remember disc cameras? lol).

My senior year, I was busy preparing for the opportunity to visit Germany/France for spring break with our high school theatre group. I thought it would be a good idea to take a photography class to help prepare for it, and my dad loaned me one of his older cameras so I could learn the basics.

See what I mean about old? And yes, this is a more recent shot, since my mother gave this to me years ago, after my father passed

For Christmas that year (1982, to be exact), I found this under the tree...

While again those are more recent pictures (even though my beloved first Nikon doesn't work very well, I still have every last thing that I got sitting on my closet shelf), somewhere in a box I think I have a photo of present right after I unwrapped it. I still remember being surprised that it wasn't still in a box or package - the camera and all the gear were perfectly placed in the camera bag. My mom later said that my dad had been in charge of the whole thing, and had gotten it at a local camera shop. No surprise (other than that my father, who had a well known allergy to shopping, had done the shopping) she also said he spent a great deal of time researching and making sure it was the perfect one for me.

I still remember very clearly sitting on the living room floor, very near to where that first photo of my dad was taken, and watching him take out each item from the camera bag, explaining what it was for and how to use it, and how much in that moment I wished he could come with me. I also remember how much he enjoyed looking through all the photos I'd taken when I got home.