Yesterday I realized it was October 11th, my parents’ (Margaret and Charles Thiemann) anniversary. Then I did a little math and realized – WOW – it would have been their 60th anniversary! My dad died in 2007 and then my mom followed in 2008. They started dating when my mom was FOURTEEN, then married when she was 17 and he was 19. They had me when my mom was just 19. I was the first of five children. It was alot of fun having such young parents: they had lots of energy to have 4 children in 4 1/2 years! (My brother Ken arrived many years later when I was in eleventh grade).
Anyways, I just love this photo. My mom has such an adoring look on her face! And they are so heartbreakingly young! When she died, I, as the oldest child AND a photographer, inherited all the family albums. This was just a little snapshot. It was taken at a wedding and there was a friend sitting right next to my mom and lots of people in the background. I liked it well enough to remove all the extra people and scenery in Photoshop.
These days, we tend to put our photos in a folder on our computer desktop. I am guilty of not printing photos like we did in the old “film” days. As a result, we don’t often have prints of all the little moments. My mom had so many albums – more like scrapbooks. She saved every program, matchbook cover, ticket, etc. And tons of black and white photos.
I am SO GLAD to have this photo! …. Don’t forget to have your favorites printed!
(Full disclosure: Yes, I work for JKP, and no, this is not a propagandistic comment.)
So true. Like most kids my age, I just have a pictures folder on my computers. And, naturally, one machine crashed and I lost several years’ worth of photos.
One of my good college friends printed every photo she took with her digital camera, and those are some of the only documents I have of those years. Even though I shot a fair amount of video during the same time, the photos seem much more special; they’re one moment frozen in time instead of unedited footage.