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Thursday, September 21st, 2006

A True Story

A funny thing happened tonight. I was on an underwater web forum, and found a thread that asked "why do you take underwater pictures?" As I was going through the thread, I started to recall something that happened to me a number of years ago from my original H2o web site. This is what I posted in response;

"It's funny that I'm reading this thread tonight. I've just changed over from film to digital in the last few weeks. And after diving for 20 years, it was interesting to look over my original prints and slides from back then. Amazing as it seemed, I could recall most of those dive from reliving it through the pictures...pretty cool stuff!

And I'll be the first to say it...its a great ego booster! Coming back from a trip with the 1% top drawer images, just makes me feel so damn good.

And here's a true "Warm Fuzzy" story -
One of the reasons I created my web site (H2opictures), was to have a wide ranging outlet for sharing my images. Over the years, I've recieved a number of e-mail's asking for assistance or usage of a image. This one time, you could tell it was a kid who wrote the e-mail. Pretty simple request, he wanted to use some pictures for a report he was doing. As I always do, I fully supported him and made sure he got whatever he needed. Nothing special, just being a good mentor and helping someone who asked for it. Well, I really didn't give it much thought at the time...and a few weeks past. And then another e-mail showed up. This time, it was the mother writing me. She went on to explain how happy her son was, and how proud of his report he was. Then the kicker...she then went on to explain that her son was a challenged individual...with a terminal illness. And all she could say was "thank you" over and over again. And how nice it was to have someone, who didn't know her son at all, extend themselves to help. Remember, I didn't think I really did anything special at the time.

The whole episode really overwhelmed me.....that's one of the reasons why I do this...that one kid."