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Dan Chavez – 2024 Digital Retouch Artist of the Year
A Facebook post looking for Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep volunteers first convinced Arizona-based Affiliated Photographer and Digital Retouch Artist Dan Chavez to apply.
“To this day, I don’t know how that Facebook friend got the post or why he posted it, but he did,” Dan laughs. The friend wasn’t a NILMDTS volunteer, but Dan thought he’d like to be.
Twelve months before seeing the post, Dan had personally learned about the importance of remembrance photography. In June 2016, Dan’s daughter was due to have her second child, Isabel. Dan’s wife had gone out before delivery to help, and Dan was due to switch out with her a few weeks later. Complications arose during delivery, and Isabel suffered fatal injuries. She lived for seven days.
Once they had a better idea of what was happening, Dan and his son immediately packed up to be with their family. At the last moment, almost as an afterthought, Dan, a commercial photographer, decided to grab his camera bag. “To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to do it,” he said. But after arriving, his daughter asked him to take a few pictures of baby Isabel. At this time, she was still intubated and hooked up to IVs and monitors. A couple of days later, when she was taken off life support, Dan’s daughter, her husband, and Isabel’s 2-year-old sister took Isabel to the hospital’s outdoor park and play area. Their …