One of my fondest memories of being a kid is my grandparents’ house. It was my second home, and I spent most of my days running around the yard and through the house with my cousins. Something that particularly interested us was the closet in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It was one of those places that you’re told not to go, which makes it all the more enticing for a child. There were a series of shelves in that closet that made the perfect ladder for a small kid, and we would often climb to the top to dig through the boxes of old photos hidden up there. Past family reunions, lost relatives, and of course, weddings made up the bulk of the pictures. We would sit up there for long periods, digging through the piles of faces. Some we recognized, some were people who we had never met, and others were our parents, grandparents, and other relatives that we simply couldn’t recognize, since little kids never think of grown-ups as being young. Those pictures amazed us. They were a window into the past. They were moments locked within little white borders and stuffed away in a box.

That’s what happens to the photos of ourselves though, isn’t it? We put them in a box and forget about them. But if you think about it, those photos aren’t really for us. Someday, I want my grand kids, and great-grand kids to climb around in my closet and dig through my old photos; all the while I’m pretending to be upset because they’re making a mess. I want one of them to come running into the room excited, and have those little hands bring me a picture and ask, “Grandpa, who is this a picture of?”, and then see the look of amazement when I reply, “That’s your grandma on our wedding day. Doesn’t she look amazing!”

That’s why I do what I do. That’s why I LOVE what I do!