Photo scanning uncovered a memory that sparked my career
Like many of our customers, Simon came to reLOVE Photos to transform his parent's extensive photo collections into digital ones after his mother passed away. Growing up in their family home near Poole in Dorset, Simon and his sister, Angela, spent most of their childhood summers exploring the many sandy beaches in the area.
His mother's photo collection included many treasured albums that lined a whole sideboard in his family home. Simon explained that only the best photographs made it into his mother's album collection, which she took great delight in forming over many years.
She loved nothing more than opening a new set of photos fresh from the developers and sitting down to sort out the pictures that would make it into an album.
Simon told us his mother would bring out and show those photo albums at every opportunity.
I cannot tell you how often I cringed and rolled my eyes as she showed my baby photos to any new girlfriend I invited home for tea.
However, his mother never dreamed of throwing any photographs away. "Mum used to say that throwing away a photograph would be like throwing away a memory".
"Even those first clumsy attempts of pictures taken by Angela and I as young children where our thumbs or fingers got in the way of the camera lens were squirrelled away into boxes and kept in cupboards, which then eventually overflowed into the loft."
Finding a Needle in a Haystack
Simon wanted to make digital copies of his mum's treasured photo albums as they meant so much to her and showcased a well-lived family life. But also wanted to include some of the 'less than perfect' snaps her parents had taken. This was when Simon made an unexpected discovery. He found a photo of the Purbeck Pride pleasure boat, which sailed out of Poole Quay.
While the snap of the boat was probably nothing special to his mother, which is why it ended up in a box in the loft, it was a significant find for Simon. His parents took him and Angela on many pleasure boat cruises around the shores of Poole when he was growing up, but this was the first boat that Simon had ever set foot on in his young life.
He told us that going on that boat gave him a unique perspective of the ocean. It set off the excitement and desire to explore new places, eventually inspiring him to join the Navy. It was one of many boats that helped him develop a love of the water, a sense of adventure, and a determination to explore the world serving in the Navy.
Simon told us, "Discovering that photo was like finding a needle in a haystack that I didn't know I was looking for!" didn't This is why that relatively unremarkable photo of the Purbeck Pride made it into Simon's order with reLOVE Photos.
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