When I try to come up with a time I truly fell in love with photography, I struggle. I think I’ve always felt connected to photography in some way, even though as a child it was through cheap point and shoot disposable cameras, with photos that I would mostly just cringe at today.
But over the years, my interest grew, and while attending the journalism program at SAIT in Calgary, my knowledge and equipment also grew. Although I did consider pursuing my diploma as a photojournalism major, the financial costs were pretty huge, and my instructors pushed me toward the print media stream, knowing I would likely be entering a career in a weekly newspaper field, where I could use both skills.
My favourite part of my job at the Journal has always been taking photos. Of course I enjoy writing, and I probably would feel incomplete without the opportunity to write, but the longevity of a photo, and how it can capture more than just a moment in time, has always been something with which I’ve been intrigued.
In the summer of 2013, I photographed a wedding that in some ways was much like many of the weddings I had photographed over the five years before that. It was a nice, happy day. It wasn’t until about a year later that I would realize how much of an impact a simple photo, one that was taken on a whim because of a simple request, could have.
On May 9, 2014, my seven-year-old son and I were grabbing a few things at a store on main street before heading to his school for an event. That’s when the crushing sound of a vehicle collision could be heard nearby, quickly followed by a number of gunshots between a suspect and police.
We were rushed to the back of the store, where we were locked in the building for what felt like an eternity, but was only a matter of minutes. The only photos I took that day were of children playing games and enjoying life.
As our Journal news team worked over the weekend to put together the pieces of what happened that day on main street, and the news of a priest who was killed at a separate location by an unknown suspect began to spread, I realized that somewhere on my computer, I likely had a photo of the same priest. The photo was taken a year earlier when he was presiding over his fourth and final wedding at the St. Paul Cathedral.
The photo came about by a simple request from Father Dasna himself. While preparing to begin the wedding, he had turned to me, seeing the camera around my neck, and asked me to take his photo.
I obliged and later edited the image and added it to the couple’s photos from their wedding day.
The photo isn’t anything technically amazing, when looked at from a professional angle. There’s no unique posing or lighting – but rather, it’s a simple photo of a priest taken straight on, showing his white robe and smiling face, in the natural light coming from the nearby front doors of the church.
Since his death, the photo of Father Dasna has been reprinted a number of times, and hangs in various places of significance, with people often speaking of the photo. It was placed on candles, and is used as a reminder of a man whose life was so unexpectedly taken away.
