Dan's Blog

Okay, it's time to crank out some posts to track some of the things going on. First of all, there's the portraits of seniors at my favourite retirement residence, Orchard View Estates in Greely, Ontario.
This wonderful place offers so much for it's residents that if I could, I'd sign up now.
Femmie Wright is the activities director there and has been an amazing support to me. I've done two portrait sessions with her residents after being inspired by Steve Bedell's work as covered in January 2008 issue of Rangefinder. His insight was that elderly people in retirement homes haven't had a portrait done in decades. Many of them never at all. By recording them in a tasteful and expressive way, he is able to offer them and their families a lasting and dignified memory. Some of these residents have since passed on and the families' only picture of them has been what Steve has captured.

That was my movitiation and so every 6 months I go to a retirement home and offer free portait sessions. It takes several days for the shooting and I don't get anything from it (monitarily) but the rewards have been rich. As David Hobby pointed out in his blog article, Friday, December 05, 2008 Four Reasons to Consider Working for Free, "I want to grow by photographing extremely interesting people."

So here's some of those 'interesting people' shown above and below.