Friday, September 10, 2010

Pay It Forward Friday




At the end of the school year last year I won a photography prize basket through the Early Childhood class I attend with the kids.  All the items in the basket were donated and I bought a few $1 raffle tickets to drop in the drawing.  One of the items in the basket was photography session with a local photographer who also happens to be a dad involved in the Early Childhood class.

When Lucy started to get more stable on her walking feet I contacted Michael and we arranged to meet a couple weeks ago on the beautiful St. Kate's campus just a few blocks from our house.  Michael was wonderful!  He was so easy-going and stressfree.  Probably because he was a parent to small children himself.

He didn't try desperately to force the kids into getting the perfect shot.  He didn't care that Lucy needed to hold her Jellycat bunny for half the shoot or that William insisted on carrying around a large stick as his sword while he performed muscle poses for the camera.  These little details are part of who my kids are and I love that he was able to capture that.

When the session was over, he edited the photos and this week he delivered the CD of the pictures to me to use at my own discretion.  None of that having to buy prints through the photographer business which is SO annoying and SO overpriced.

All of this was free to me so that he could donate his time to a worthy cause -- keeping our Early Childhood classroom doors open while the district's budget is being cut left and right.

But the real kicker is that all the while Michael was snapping happy shots of our little family he was grieving inside.  That very week he had lost his 7-year-old niece after week's battle with a rare strain of meningitis.  If you live in the Twin Cities you probably saw this story all over the news.

I kept asking Michael if he wanted to reschedule and that he should take his time getting the photos back to us but he told me working a little bit here and there was helping him get through.  Although it was the first time I'd ever met him I can already tell that Michael is an extraordinary man.  So here's my tiny act of giving back to him.  If you live in the Twin Cities area and are looking for a great family photographer, please consider Michael Murray Photography.

And if you're interested in seeing the photos he took of our family check out my Facebook page.  If we're not Facebook friends -- why not?  There's a link over there on my sidebar for us to get friended.  Is that a word now?  Facebook's so powerful is turned a noun into a verb!

OK, your turn!  What good happened to you this week or what good did you do to someone else?

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