Today I post one of my favorite all-time photos I have ever taken. I took this photo of my Dad almost a year before he passed away on September 15, 2014. I didn’t shoot much 4×5 back then although I had been shooting it for years – it just wasn’t something I did very often – sporadic at best. I asked my Dad to sit for a portrait outdoors and he obliged. He was not in great health but was very patient while I set up the camera. I tilted the lens just a bit to keep only his eyes in focus, snapped the shutter, then put things away, and basically forgot about that sheet of film for 18 months. In early 2015 I was developing some film that had been lying around the house. As I pulled the film out of the wash, my heart skipped a beat when I saw this image. Of course, it was a negative so I wasn’t sure it was great yet, but I knew I had an image of my Dad that I had forgotten about. After the film dried I rushed and to scan it. As the image came up on my computer screen I almost cried. It was the perfect image – my Dad reaching back to me, giving me a gift that will last forever – a large format portrait of him, the only one I own and now a prized possession.
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