Photo ©Al Macphee/Miraclepr.com
I’ve often written about the importance of remaining neutral as a professional photographer, but sometimes you will want to get involved for a good reason.
Recently, I wanted to help a fellow photographer, Andy Uglow, with his battle against cancer, so I took part – alongside Andy’s friends, family and group of photography students – in his ‘Braving the Shave‘ fundraiser.
My connection with Andy goes back to our Herald Express days. I first met Kathy, his wife, around the year 2000 when we were still shooting on film. She was the editor of the Weekender, the free companion to the local paper. Kathy met Andy and they married.
Up until Andy became ill, we used to share Saturday day shifts for the Herald. We would take it in turns, together with another local photographer, and we tended to do one weekend a month each.
When Andy was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, in August last year, it hit everybody, and we all wanted to do something for him. This included 14 of his photography students from Space – Launching Futures, who were all determined to show support for their tutor.
When the idea of the sponsored head shave came up, I thought, ‘It’s got to be done.’ I offered to go down and take some pictures for them, and I toyed with the idea of joining in and having my head shaved.
Andy’s son, Aaron, was organising it, and when I asked if he would mind if I got my head shaved, fully intending to do a bit of fundraising beforehand, he said it would be no problem. But time was against me and I didn’t do the fundraising.
Since Andy was in isolation, he couldn’t come to the event, but he filmed himself getting his head shaved on FaceTime, just to start everyone else off. He then watched everything that was going on for a couple of hours, egging people on and thanking them.
Then he saw me taking pictures and said, ‘Is that Ali? Get him to do it as well!’ So I thought, ‘Well, that’s it, He’s quite happy with me doing it. I’ll do it.’ So I did it… .
So where are the pictures, Al?
Now this is the fundraising part of it.
If you want to see any pictures of me with a bald head, make a donation to Brave the Shave, email me to tell me (info@miraclepr.com), and if I get ten emails – it doesn’t matter what the donations are – I’ll put the picture up in another blog post.
Funds will go to The Ricky Grant Day Unit at Torbay Hospital and will go towards making it more comfortable for patients, including Andy, who attend chemotherapy treatment there. Andy will have to go in several times, sometimes for five or six hours at a time. That’s a long time to just sit and have treatment. If you’re looking at four bare walls, how boring is that?
If this post raises awareness and gets another £50 in the kitty, that’s £50 to pay for a day’s telly, isn’t it? And if you’ve got something to distract you (like Loose Women or Hawaii-5-0!) at least you’re not looking at four bare walls.
Brave the Shave had raised £1,189 at last count. That was on Tuesday, so hopefully, by next week, we might have raised two grand, which would be amazing. Go on, you know what to do!