Retouch Retouch

I came across a strange situation a few weeks ago while at dinner with Kim’s cousin Chrisit and her husband Tristan and their visiting family from D.C.  We were talking photography and business and so on and eventually the conversation turned to Tristan’s cousin.  She apparently was married in L.A over a year ago and has been at a bit of a standstill image wise since her wedding.  As it turns out, a few weeks after her wedding the photographer that captured her wedding sadly passed away.  As you can imagine the bride didn’t want to pressure a grieving family and business partners so she left the situation alone for a while and finally received a disc of images from the day un-retouched in their RAW form.  With the imagery in hand, she was unsure how to go about getting it retouched and put together to be made into an album.  So, I volunteered to do the job.  I’ve been retouching the images this weekend and have been feeling a little weird about it the whole time.  I know nothing about the photographer, not even his name or if he was shooting with assistants, or just himself.  But I can’t help feeling like every image I pull up to begin working on is a window out of a persons last few weeks on earth.  What was he thinking when he captured the Santa Monica sunset.  How was he posing the couple, talking with them, joking, getting a few laughs and smiles.  Sometimes it’s hard to accept the reality that we only get limited time on earth and every day could very well be your last.  So I’m going to post these few photos from a persons last weeks on earth, turn this computer off and go enjoy my own Encinitas sunset with my wife as if it is my last in appreciation of the gift of life.