SILVER
FRAME STORIES

the

Not long after our own wedding, I took my new husband home
to where I grew up in West Virginia to meet my “adopted” grandparents, Dot & Glen, and to show them some wedding pictures. While we were there, Justin did what Justin does:
he took pictures. 

See, there are people in this world who do photography and then there are people who just are photographers all of the time, it’s just that some of the time they actually have a camera in their hands. And that’s my Justin. He was born to do this and
it’s not something he can ever turn off.

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So he started to photograph my grandparents together, just being who they are. And after we had spent a few hours with them, on our way out the door he asked to take just one more standing portrait of the two of them in front of their fireplace holding the wedding picture in a silver frame that had sat on their mantle for the past sixty two and a half years. The photo was an after-thought, an almost didn’t happen. We were already out the front door & on to the porch when he thought to go back for it. The whole thing took about thirty seconds
and then we were gone.

And that would have been the end of the story. Would have
been of course, except that we got the call a few short weeks later that my Grandpa Glen had passed away suddenly in the night. So this picture that started as an afterthought became the last picture of the two of them together we have in this world.

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THE WHY >

As you can imagine, when all this happened, I thought a lot about the wedding photographer that was there with them on their day. I wondered if when he pushed the button to create this image he could have known that it would be his work that she was holding onto right before she said goodbye to the love of her life. I wondered if he could know the generations in our family that would want copies of it. I wondered if he could have known the sixty two and a half years that image was the start of. And then I wondered if any of us realize that when we push
the button now.

For me, I think that’s what photography does. Time marches on and this moment is gone and this moment is gone. And this moment is gone. But photography says “no, not this one. This moment stays.” All because a photographer thought to go back and say, just one more. And that right there became the very foundation of why we do what we do.