Summer Work Finale

Well dear friends, all good things must come to end!

This has been a summer to remember.  Having worked at Photos By Dill was a very memorable experience.  We learned so much, worked hard and had loads of fun.  Met people from all over this country during our photo shoots, and perhaps learned a bit about the family social interactions.

It was amazing to see the troubles & pains so many families went through to have these reunions.  The cost involved alone is amazing.  Families travel from all corners of this country and many times from abroad simply to reunite with other family members for a few days of new memories.  Then to have the opportunity to make it an everlasting memory by taking their photographs; was a very rewarding aspect of this summer learning experience.

Today was our last day of volunteering.  For the second time, we had to travel to the Snow Mountain Ranch YMCA.  A much larger branch than the one in Estes Park, where we worked the most.  This location is on the western side of the Rockies in Granby, CO.  About 65 miles or approximately 1.5 hrs if driving across RMNP; the most direct route.  The other option is to take the long way around the Park and taking I-70; a 3 hr drive.   We had to travel there today to shoot a family reunion of 130 members.  A huge number and the largest reunion of the summer for us.  A shoot that almost did not take place due to weather.  It had been raining all through the night and by shoot time at 10am, it was continuing.  This family was so adamant about having their reunion professionally photographed, that they were willing to stand under the rain and have their memories recorded.  And so we did.  With just 2 of us taking pictures and being directed and posed by Wendy, we proceeded to shoot and get wet in the process.  No sooner we began this process that rains finally stopped.  About 1.5 hrs later and 150 pictures taken between us 2 photographers, the rains returned.

Yes, those are garbage bags.

Another small thing that made meeting this family special was the fact they were mostly from North Dakota.  One family member traveling all the way from Norway.  Hearing their names and accents brought back many happy memories of our times in ND.

We only photographed one of the Photo Parks to share with you.  Here is the one at Estes Park YMCA.  The trailer as you can see houses all the computers for the families to view and make their selections.  You can see a few of the "studios" that were setup this day and the "terrible" backdrop for the pictures.  This was our work location for the summer (with the 2 exceptions when we traveled to Snow Mountain Ranch).  The "Lab", where all pictures are cropped and color corrections made before printing, is one aspect of the job we never got involved due to our work schedule.  As mentioned before, we could have easily worked 60 hrs/week if we wanted.

On the return trip from Snow Mountain Ranch, we came across these bulls right at the Continental Divide 

  

As you can see, this was a very memorable summer indeed!

Tuesday morning we leave Colorado and return to Missouri.  A two night stop will be made at Truman Lake, Warsaw where we will meet friends from our Texas volunteer job this past winter.

Until the next adventure…….