Why I love my job.

[Nathan Buck]

At the weekend a close friend of my brothers passed away, he was 31. I had only met him a couple of times, but he was a top bloke and highly regarded by all those who knew him.

One of the times I met him was at an event my brother was attending and I was mucking about with a 5Dmkii - I'd never really taken still photos before so thought it would be a good time to experiment. It occurred to me tonight that I still have those photos. I've just spent half an hour sifting through them to select the ones containing him. At the time, they were just silly photos - he's mucking around, pulling faces, generally just being his natural self. All quite candid shots.

Anyway, I've uploaded them and passed them onto his family to have. I hope they find some comfort in them at this sad time. These kind of photos are things money can't buy and I'm honoured to have captured them, such a privilege.

It's crazy, you never know just how important something can become.

[Donald McPherson]

Wish there was a like button.

[Noa Put]

My mother died a month ago, The past years she stayed in a retirement home because she had dementia, she constantly repeated words she picked up and the only way to get her out of that state was to joke around and tease her. It didn't always work but sometimes, for a short time I could pull her back into reality and we often had a good laugh, I filmed those moments with my smartphone and I edited a short piece with these shots to be projected at the funeral. When the film was playing I saw people crying and laughing at the same time. Also the past years I have had a few requests from my weddingwork if I had extra footage from a person in the family who died right after the wedding, I never charge anything for that because the thank you message I get after that is priceless, but it reminds me how meaningful photos and especially video gets once people are not around anymore.

[Richard Gooderick]

Me too.
It is three years since my father died.
His wife (my stepmother) died a year before that. She had dementia for five years. It was very strange the way it started. Two weeks before Christmas, they were sitting at home in the evening when she turned to my father and said "where's Bernard?".She was hallucinating and thought he was someone else. She had been completely normal until then. Imagine that happening to you.
When I eventually get down to it I want to try to make a film about dementia using surviving material. Some has been lost.
I have audio recordings, stills and bits of footage shot with all kinds of devices. .
The point is that I knew I wanted to have a record of my father but I didn't want to turn his declining years into a film shoot every time we met up (he lived in another country).
Besides he would always play to the camera whenever there was a whiff of anything formal.
For anyone else I would say grab whatever you can of your loved ones. Don't bother about making it perfect. In fact it is often what you capture spontaneously, in humdrum situations eg watching TV, sitting in the garden, that captures them best. Audio as well as video.
You don't get a chance to re-shoot once they are dead.