When Cal suddenly left us last year, after the screaming of no and the tears my mind went straight to her husband and son. What can i do?
Luckily I have a back up of photos so I went and found every photo I had taken of Cal, from the first time I took her photo 20 or so years ago, to the family photos, the wedding photos and the other photos taken for her job or even the backstage ones. I also went through a heap of reject photos, ones that weren’t quite up to my standards… at that point… screw the standards, who give’a. fuck if it’s a little out of focus. The memory is there, screw the technicalities. Once I had them all i dropped over the hard drive to her family, it was really the least I could do, and the way I was feeling, was all I could really do.
It was only a few days later I got a message asking for a photo of me and Cal for the memorial slideshow and photo board.
Fuck. There aren’t any. Then the tears came back (to be honest, they contining). I’m so busy capturing everyone else’s world that I don’t get into the photos.
The facebook world has a heap of problems with it, but capturing memories is a great thing. I just did a friendship search for me and Cal, reading through our interactions, re reading old messages, basically anything to try hold onto her just a little bit longer.
Then it popped up, after all the photos i’d tagged cal in for work related stuff, there as a selfie i’d forgotten about. A random bumping into one morning after a client of mine was late for a shoot. We happened to cross a road together and then we were getting a coffee. A quick one, but to mark the occasion, an occasion that in the scale of things at the time wasn’t that anything memorable… but just because of the randomness I took a selfie. The only photo of me and Cal. (yes, more tears).
But I had what I didn’t think I had and i’m so grateful that client was late and that we took a selfie. I never take selfies with my friends, and those comed/wellknown friends because I always thought it was a “fan” thing. But if they are friends, it’s a friend thing… I’m over thinking of it now. I take more selfies.
Along the same
Earlier that year, another friend from the comedy world, Ardian,, who I was really close to back when I was kicking off in my career, passed away. I hadn’t been in touch with him for a long time, and again. It hit me that I had a heap of photos of him. I remembered one, but that was way back before phones had cameras, so the one that was taken would have been taken on film. And god knows where they was (i’m much more organised digitally, i have shoe boxes of negatives in two states and random prints hanging about in different shoe boxes).
Again, I’m really sad there wasn’t anything there to remember him other than my photos of him and the memories… Until I opened a random box looking for something, and there were, at my going-away party when I finished uni back in 2000, peak Wombat and Adrian time.
So where am I going with this all?
Get in photos.
Get in selfies.
Take them, don’t think about it. Just say yes. Might it not be the best photo of you ever? Maybe not. Might it be one of the most valuable things you or someone has to hold onto in the future?
Time will tell.
