There are a lot of great things about being a photographer.
I’ve photographed professional sports, celebrities, weddings, wild parties and wild animals. I’ve worked at places like the White House and the Pentagon. I’ve watched couples get married, athletes make incredible plays, and cadets walk across the stage at West Point.
I’ve spent more than 30 years catching moments in people’s lives.
And that’s also the hardest part of being a photographer.
Because sometimes, years later, the phone rings.
And someone asks if you still have the photographs.
The Miracle Party
One of my favorite charities I’ve ever photographed is The Miracle Party, an enormous annual celebration for children with cancer and blood disorders.
For one night, the hospitals, tests and treatments take a back seat.
And when I say enormous, I mean enormous.
There are games, bouncy castles, concerts, horses and carriages, fire trucks, acrobats—you name it. The Army has brought Humvees. Musicians perform with the kids. Bakeries hand out cupcakes. First responders show children around their equipment.
Then the kids arrive.
And it’s magical.
As a photographer, I get to watch a child who’s spent far too much time in a hospital climb onto a horse for the first time. I get to photograph huge smiles, wide eyes, laughter and kids simply getting to be kids.
Some of them come back the following year.
And the year after that.
You recognize them. You remember their faces. You watch them grow.
You see them every year until you don’t.
Then the Phone Rings
Over the years, I’ve gotten those calls.
One of the children has passed away, and the family needs photographs.
So I start searching.
I go back through years of Miracle Party photographs looking for a particular face. Sometimes I’m looking for the dress they were wearing that year. Sometimes it’s a shirt I remember. Sometimes I recognize them immediately.
And I’m no longer looking for the technically perfect photograph.
I’m looking for every photograph I have of their child.
I transfer each one to Dropbox, usually with tears welling up in my eyes, knowing that those photographs mean something completely different today than they did when I took them.
At the party, they were pictures of a happy kid having a great night.
Now they’re memories.
The Call You Never Want
It doesn’t only happen with the Miracle Party.
Not long ago, a mother called me. I had photographed her daughter’s senior portraits.
I remembered her.
She was a bright light with an incredible smile, and we’d made some beautiful photographs together.
Her daughter had been killed in a car accident few months after our photo shoot.
Her mother needed another set of the photographs.
So I went back to that session and looked at those images again.
Except this time, I wasn’t looking at them as the photographer who took them.
I was looking at them knowing what they now meant to her mother.
That’s a part of this job nobody really talks about.
More Than a Photograph
When we’re taking pictures, we’re usually thinking about right now.
The wedding.
The senior year.
The soccer game.
The birthday.
The family being together.
The kid riding a horse and forgetting about cancer for a few minutes.
We’re capturing a moment because it’s worth remembering.
But if you do this job long enough, eventually you understand something else.
Sometimes a photograph becomes important for a reason you never imagined when you pressed the shutter.
Sometimes it becomes one of the few things a family has left.
I’ve received that phone call before.
I know I’ll receive it again.
And after more than 30 years of doing a job that I still absolutely love, I can tell you without hesitation: That’s the hardest part of being a photographer.
Behind the Lens with Brody Hall
Photography has given me a front-row seat to some incredible moments in people’s lives. Weddings, championships, graduations, celebrations and ordinary afternoons that didn’t seem particularly important at the time.
I’ve learned not to underestimate any of them.
Because we never really know which photograph is simply going to make someone smile today…
and which one they’ll treasure for the rest of their life.
