Post a photo that means a lot to you personally.

I would be interested in seeing photos that mean a lot to you.

It does not have to be a good photo, it can be out of focus, badly composed etc.

To emphasise this point, here is one. This is from when I was a kid in 75 or so, with the late great Tommy Hafey. Some Australians might recall he coached the Richmond Football Club during it's greatest era, and went on to coach other clubs.

As you can see it's in poor condition, and my mum was not much of a photographer. You would be hard pressed to find a worse photo than this. I found it cleaning out her stuff when she passed a year ago.

Meeting him was like meeting superman when I was a little kid, he gave me some promo stuff and I have always remembered it. Finding the photo reminded me of mum when I was a kid and my ongoing love of the Richmond footy club.

This photo means a lot to me.

OK I'll play, but I hope you don't mind a pair of related photographs.

The first is from when I joined the RAF at my Attestation, having just taken the Oath of Allegiance. This was Tuesday 1st November 1983, as a wet behind the ears 18 year old, and I was not long an 18 year old either, since my birthday is in August. (I'm on the right)

Heh! Where do you go with this "topic"? Many thousands of photos spanning decades, whether it be the 50,000 digital photos I have stored, or boxes of film/negatives/prints going way back -- it can all add up!

How about this one: back in maybe the summer of '68 I was with some of my closest, most beloved friends, having an outing at a local lake -- my sister Cindy grabbed this photo (I'm the goofy one in the middle). Two of these beloved friends have passed, and to this day I and the other survivors can't help but, well, feel it...

Ah, well, "Going Back"...

Back in the mid-'70s, my (ex) wife and our two first kids, one of whom has passed...

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Excellent.

I just thought it would be a good topic to remind me (and maybe others) that photography is not about gear, pixel peeping, or creating technically perfect photos.

Plus I always like to see other peoples "important" photos with the story attached
Thank you.

And then, speaking of loss -- my son Judah died in 1993 of a car accident...we struggled over what to put on his headstone, but then the fact that he loved Pink Floyd came across, with the song "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" shining brightly in our hearts:

A pic of dad before his WWII tour of the south Pacific. The family didn't have much $ so we don't have pics of the family. No baby pics, childhood, etc. This was taken when he was 19 at a machine shop he was employed with. His mom thought that by working in a trade that supported the war effort his skills might keep him stateside. Nope. He was one of the youngest there with the least time so they drafted him 2 months after the pic was taken.

Dad had begun sharing about his early days but we didn't get the time to hear the rest of his story. Among his old items was an album of his service buddies and we were just going to start that when complications from COPD hospitalized him. He didn't smoke but had spent years around people who did. Later I found his notes on his tour of the South Pacific and the encounters experienced on ship. Following the treaty his notes about Japan and 2 months in Kyushu before his discharge from service. He relayed that considering how he thought the Japanese viewed the US, he didn't feel animosity among those he encountered. He had joked with me about marrying a Japanese gal. (I thought that spoke well because many carried such hatred which for that generation in service is understandable.)

He had been transferred off the USS Indianapolis CA-35 2 months prior to the torpedoing and sinking of the ship. Luckily I have his tour notes and am able to read about some of the various fighting his duties placed him. Dad did not talk of his service days so unfortunately I don't have his first hand comments. Part of family history that went with him when he passed in '15.