A tribute to Dad…

On my commute home I noticed the moon was shining clearly in calm skies tonight, inspiring me to make my first attempts at celestial photography. The old adage, “You’ll never find it when you need it” proved true as my search for an old tripod turned futile. Unexpectedly I did run across a pleasant surprise… my father’s old camera bag.

I lost my father to cancer almost a decade ago. However as I grow older I continue to learn how much of my father is part of who I am as I was a part of him. It’s a fact of life that us as children discover and catch us by surprise. Cleaning off the equipment brought back memories of how often my dad would whip out the camera, no matter how much my brother and I protested… rings true for me today as co-workers, collegues, and friends flee because they don’t look their best.

What really brought a smile to my face was what was in his camera bag. A Canon camera, neck strap, Speedlite flash, extra batteries for the flash, manual, etc. My 7m bag had the same… with a couple differences of course. Dad had this gi-normous (thanks Christen for introducing that word to my vocab) external flash for his camera in addition to the Speedlite. I have a huge zoom lense that dwarfs his camera 3 times over. And my 30D is 2 to 3 times larger than his 35mm. I remember as I got older my dad would remark how I towered over him.

As I carefully packed away his stuff I find myself wishing that we had a chance to share our hobby together and wonder how much we would try to out do each other in pictures (I of course learned my sense of competion from him). Instances like this ring true to remind us to always cherish the moments we have with certain people and not to take it for granted. Please feel free to look at a couple more pictures here.