I have always loved old photographs. The faded ones. The slightly blurry ones taken before anyone knew how to hold a camera steady. The ones where nobody is posing because nobody thought the moment was worth documenting — and yet somehow those are the ones you can't put down.
I grew up loving photographs the way some people love music. They were time machines. Evidence. Proof that something beautiful happened.
But I didn't truly understand what photographs were until I lost my best friend of 35 years, Bill John.
Bill John hated having his picture taken. Absolutely hated it. But he never once backed away from a camera pointed at us. That distinction - between not wanting to be seen alone and wanting the two of us to be remembered together - is something I've thought about a thousand times since he's been gone.
When he passed, I couldn't look at the photographs at first. The pain was too deep. Too raw. Too much of him in every single frame.
But then - after a while - I just needed him. Nothing else mattered. I needed him. And all I had were our pictures.
So now I have one or two everywhere I spend the most time. I open a drawer and he's there. I look up and he's there. The photographs didn't bring him back. But they gave me somewhere to put my eyes when the grief got too loud.
That changed everything about how I understood my job as a photographer.
Around the same time, my Mama was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
I won't pretend that word doesn't still sit heavy. It does. There are days she doesn't remember things that would break your heart to know she's forgotten. Days where the losses compound in ways I wasn't prepared for.
And my Dad - her partner, my anchor - passed nine months ago from cancer. Bill John, my best friend of 35 years, passed from cancer too. Almost exactly two years apart.
Our last professional family portrait was taken seventeen years ago. Seventeen years. We thought we had time. We thought there would be another Christmas, another birthday, another someday when we'd all get dressed up and do it properly.
We ran out of time.
I have plenty of candids of my Mama on my phone. Plenty of photos of just her. But barely any of us together in recent years. Not the kind you frame. Not the kind you hand down. Not the kind you open a drawer and find when you need her most.
That is the regret I carry. And it is the reason The Present Project exists.
The Present Project is a luxury portrait experience I created specifically for families who have a loved one living with dementia or Alzheimer's. It's not a clinical service. It's not a charity. It's a deeply personal offering built from my own grief, my own regret, and my absolute conviction that the families living this right now deserve something beautiful to hold onto.
I come to your home - or wherever your loved one feels most themselves. I take my time. I follow their lead. I stop when they need to stop. And I create portraits that feel like truth, not performance.
Portraits of your Dad in his favorite chair. Your Mama at the kitchen table where she's always been the most herself. Your grandfather and his best friend laughing on a bench in the afternoon sun. The ordinary moments that are anything but ordinary.
Because I know - I know in my bones - that one day you will open a drawer and need them. And I want them to be there.
If you are caring for someone with dementia right now, I want you to hear this directly:
You have not run out of time yet. But the window is open right now, today, in a way it may not be tomorrow.
The Present Project was made for you. For your family. For the photographs you will reach for when nothing else helps.
Please don't wait for someday.
Tina Minshall is a Jacksonville, Florida portrait photographer and founder of The Present Project - a luxury family portrait experience for families living with dementia and Alzheimer's. Serving Northeast Florida.