There's a time in every kid's childhood when he or she meets a Larger-Than-Life character and is in total awe.
Maybe it's a shopping mall Santa, an amusement park mascot or the magician who comes to perform at the local library. Or for boys and girls raised to be sports fans, it's the thrill of first seeing your favorite ballplayers up close and personal!
FANTOGRAPHY is a new book project by former San Diego Padres executive Andy Strasberg, who's been taking fan photos of his favorite players since he was a kid.
That's him at Yankee Stadium with home run champ Roger Maris above.
He's now on a quest to connect with like-minded fans to share similar baseball memories and has some intriguing observations about how the digital age has changed the way we treat the photographic record of our lives:
"Every day hundreds of baseball 'snapshots' taken before the digital age are lost as the original owners pass away and their belongings become trash. Ironically, for different reasons, the same fate is happening to today's digital baseball pictures. Once a snapshot is taken by a baseball fan with a digital camera/phone they are downloaded to a computer, never printed, and almost always forgotten."
You can submit your favorite fan photo at Fantography here.
Strasberg is specifically seeking contributions from non-professional photographers of players when they are NOT playing the game -- or other classic ballpark scenes from the majors or minors that capture "a poignant personal moment."
He's looking for "a long forgotten player emerging from the team hotel to board the bus to the game. Or a picture of a player in his baggy flannel uniform pausing near the stands for a quick portrait, with a sign advertising the local beer sponsor behind him. Maybe a cell phone snapshot of a rookie having a late night snack after a victory."
At Reel Profiles, we share Strasberg's philosophy about focusing on some of life's little moments that certainly don't qualify as typical milestones. Sometimes, interviewing your grandfather about a favorite childhood amusement park or his favorite place to sit at the baseball game might generate more engaging memories than a major historical event.
Let's face it, there are plenty of places you can see the footage of the Moon Landing, but where can you hear your grandparents or parents share their amazement on that day-- taking you back to the moment through their eyes?
All too often in personal documentaries, tribute videos and family history projects, the focus is on births, graduations, career achievements, weddings and deaths. Sometimes the best biographical stories surprisingly come from the "trivial" moments in between!
Former presidential candidate John Edwards finally admitted to the rumor that dogged him all during the 2008 campaign. Yes, indeed, he is the father of his mistress's baby girl.
Edwards just keeps on smacking it to his traumatized wife Elizabeth, who is still battling cancer. According to press reports, the child was conceived in the middle of 2007, right around the same time that John and Elizabeth renewed their wedding vows for their 30th anniversary.
We're not here to preach against the pitfalls of infidelity -- although we are on the record that we are wholeheartedly against it.
The Edwards case begs the question of family legacy. How will his other kids see their new 2-year-old sister? How will this wind up on the Edwards Family Tree?
Essentially, when you make a personal documentary about your family, you are faced with two choices. Do you want to be a journalist/biographer telling the story from a detached, objective perspective -- or do you want to preserve family stories and memories for future generations?
There is no right or wrong answer here. Some people embrace the warts of their ancestors, even wear it as a badge of pride (like finding out an ancestor was imprisoned at Alcatraz or was a prominent mafia hitman). Others find it shameful.
When you put together a family documentary, it is up to you about whether to enact your power of selective omission.
Unfortunately for Edwards, his dirty laundry cannot be shoved back in the hamper.
So how about you? If you are the family historian or family filmmaker, do you see yourself more as a journalist or more as a memory keeper?
Tiger Woods. Blah. Blah. Blah. Sex Scandal. Blah. Blah. Blah. Pre-Nup. Blah. Blah. Blah. Mistresses. Blah. Blah. Blah.
In this era when no one wants to take a stand on anything, we certainly stipulate that adultery is selfish, mean-spirited and morally wrong.
But the Libertarian streak in us also makes us wonder why so many Americans care about the infidelity updates flashing across our screens every 10 minutes.
WHO CARES?!?
Let Tiger sort out his own family problems and let's focus instead on the people we care about. How about paying tribute to our parents or grandparents who have been married for (gasp!) 50 years or even 75 years!
Aside from a fabulous deli platter, there's no better way to celebrate these kind of happy life milestones than commissioning a personal documentary for a community screening and for future generations....
OK, we do wanna make one comment about the Tiger Woods thing. If you have to pay someone to stay married to you, maybe it's not a healthy relationship.
It is extremely rare that we know when history is unravelling before us.
Pearl Harbor. The JFK, RFK and MLK Assasinations. 9/11.
One of the best ways to merge personal history and American history in a personal documentary is to ask your interview subject what he or she was doing when the World Stopped. Tomorrow's interviews might be anticlimactic, with answers like "Why, I was on Twitter, of course."
But your parents and grandparents likely have fascinating snippets on how earth-shattering news impacted the most minute details of their lives.
World War II veteran Clifford Barrett, who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in Nazi Germany, was 15-years-old when America entered the war. He heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the radio. A dramatic reminder of how close teenage years are to adulthood, he was running around Europe with a gun only three years later.
For the past 41 years, Barrett has been writing letters to politicians, celebrities, athletes and military figures -- asking them to share their personal memories of Pearl Harbor. The amazing collection of correspondence, which he refuses to sell to memorabilia dealers, includes replies from President George Bush (the first one), first lady Lady Bird Johnson, golfer Arnold Palmer, broadcast news legend Walter Cronkite and actors Jimmy Stewart, James Cagney and Gene Kelly.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, actor Walter Matthau ("The Bad News Bears") wrote that he was listening to a New York Giants game:
"I was listening to a football game and I thought it was very
presumptuous of them to tell us about Pearl Harbor while this important
game was going on. I have since changed my mind."
Sometimes the contrast of life's simplest things are the most powerful reminders of history.
Of course, putting a life story in a wider historical context need not be centered around tragic events. You may choose to get your interviewee animated about a World Series game, a county fair, a presidential election, the theater release of a classic movie or even the music that was popular decades ago.
These personalized stories used in a Reel Profiles documentary can be enhanced with archival footage and photographs of historic events, and of course, vintage music.
Do you know your grandparents' wedding song?
Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Pedro Martinez, who inarguably owns one of the biggest egos in professional sports, was unable to deliver his team to the Promised Land this postseason.
But Pedro already has a bunch of Cy Young Awards and a World Series ring from his Red Sox days, so what's another trophy mean? Just something else to collect dust on the mantel.
What's really important to Pedro, discovered Boston Herald sports columnist Steve Buckley, is Pedro's legacy.
“Normally, when you die, people tend to give you props about the
good things. But that’s after you die. So I’m hoping to get it before I
die," the ballplayer told Buckley.
“I don’t want to die and hear everybody say, ‘Oh, there goes one of
the best players ever.’ If you’re going to give me props, just give
them to me right now.”
Pedro's right. We don't praise him as frequently as we should.
Just kidding. Although Pedro's words are hardly meant to be altruistic, they do apply to those of us gathering family histories, planning a milestone birthday or anniversary gala or a corporate tribute dinner.
Why should a person's obituary or funeral eulogy be the most prominent occasion to lavish praise or celebrate a life's accomplishments?
Pedro's life has been well covered -- although we will take your business Mr. Martinez if you are interested -- but one of the moments we would include in a Reel Profiles personal documentary about him is captured here:
When you are performing exceptionally well at your job, participating in acts of medical tape bondage is hilarious. If Pedro were a so-so pitcher, these hijinks would probably be seen as a sign that he doesn't take his job seriously.
In any case, you don't have to win a Cy Young Award or wrap yourself up in medical tape to have a movie made about you. Whether you are interested in commissioning a personal film about family history, a business legacy, an amazing philanthropist, a military experience or a profile of your nonprofit organization, just remember what Pedro said.
If you are going to give someone props, give them props right now.
The Guinness Book of World Records gives out a lot of framed commemorative certificates for the World's Oldest Living Person for obvious reasons. The moment you achieve such notoriety, in this case at age 115 (!), your heart's expiration date is already way overdue.
Gertrude Baines, the daughter of a Georgia slave, first gained notoriety last November as the oldest African-American to vote for Barack Obama for president. In January, after the competition passed away, she was honored with the title of World's Oldest Person, period.
Here's how the Los Angeles Times described the hoopla at the Western Convalescent Hospital:
"Reporters, photographers, and camera
crews descended on the quiet Los Angeles hospital that had been the
supercentenarian’s home since she broke her hip at 107. She made
headlines across the globe. Fellow senior citizens at the hospital,
some approaching 100, said they desired her longevity.
All
the while, Ms. Baines slept away in her robe, now and then breaking
from her routine of eating crispy bacon, watching Jerry Springer on TV,
and participating in church services to take interviews. The attention,
the questions, the fascination people had with her age in her final
year amused and perplexed her.
“Why all these questions?’’ she snapped back at reporters once. “I want to know.’’
The question Ms. Baines seemed to like the least was the one she got the most. What’s your secret? How do stay alive so long?
Each time, she shrugged her bent shoulders and referred people to God, saying, “Ask him.’’
People Magazine also reported that Gertrude enjoyed a daily dose of The Price is Right, years after iconic game show host Bob Barker left the Showcase Showdown.
When capturing life stories for Reel Profiles personal documentaries, we cherish the delicious details as much as Jerry Springer loves watching his guests throw chairs.
Sometimes it's the so-called trivial day-to-day stuff that spices up a personal biography.
How your grandfather survived and fed his kids during the Great Depression is worth preserving as family lore. But so is the fact that he attended the 1946 Red Sox-Cardinals World Series or that he cursed the television every time President Richard Nixon popped on the screen.
What are some of your favorite "trivial" family stories?
Wow. Where do we begin?
Britain's Henry Allingham is a World War I veteran. Great-great grandfather of 14 kiddies -- and great-great-great grandfather of one. And, following the death of 113-year-old Tomoji Tanabe in Japan, he's now the World's Oldest Man.
Far better to be the World's Oldest Man in the Guinness Book of World Records than that guy with the long creepy fingernails, but then again, maybe we're being judgmental.
Can you imagine having six living generations at your family reunion?
Better make sure the buffet table has lots of vegetables. The Japanese elder credited leafy green treats as a major factor behind his longevity.
Screenwriters Mike Bender and Doug Chernack, founders of AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com, are the latest feel-good Internet success story. But they also may have inadvertently changed the character of future family tree research.
Right now, if you try to dig up information on three or four generations back, you'll be lucky to get a birth certificate, military record or a passenger list of a steamship. If you are super-lucky, you might be able to unearth an old sepia-toned studio picture in which no one in the family is smiling.
Was life miserable back then -- or was there just horrible customer service at the first photography studios?
Fast forward to 2109. The descendants of Australian science fiction novelist Sean Williams will be able to see him pretend to choke his mother.
THE CHOKER
Williams' legacy is already well affirmed as the author of best-selling novel, "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed."
He also is the world's only science fiction novelist to create a character who speaks only in the lyrics of British pop star Gary Numan (remember the MTV video "Cars" when MTV played videos?)
He now can add Awkward Family Photo fame to his legacy. Williams is the well-dressed teenage strangler.
"Obviously, it's a joke, something I did to pass the time while waiting for the photographer to get the lenses or lighting right and mum played up to it nicely," he says. "Somewhere in my photo album is the staged snap he took thirty seconds later, but I've always preferred this one. It colorfully captures the dynamic of my family in a single glance."
"There's so much in the shot that I love," adds Williams. "My dad's shorts, the mock-choking, my sister's glare (and her clothes), my digital watch. People have responded to all of that, and that did surprise me. I thought the photo, if it appeared on the site at all, would barely be noticed."
Sean's father was an Anglican priest who cherished a relaxed dress code outside of church.
"He did play Australian Rules football, but that's as close as he got to being a gym teacher," Williams recalls. "He died in the 90s, but I like to think he would have found this all rather hilarious. His fashion sense was just awful!"
BUT BACK TO THOSE SEPIA-TONED SNAPSHOTS that document many of our family history stories.
Does anyone out there have ancestors who liked to smile?
What will future generations think about your family photos? Any gag pictures in your wedding album that would make a hilarious part of your family history? What pictures of your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents make you laugh?
Send us your favorite pictures and the backstory!