touching

It’s a sad day when your Grandfather needs to go into a ‘nursing home.’ For years my Grandpa, Stephen Clarke, had always been the strongest, smartest, most capable guy in the room. Now, he had been reduced to needing 24-hour care in a place that smells like a hospital.

In an effort to help him, my family and I cleaned out his now empty house. As I was sorting through things and cleaning I found a box of old 35mm slides. Little did I know just how much these slides would change the next half-decade of my life, eventually leading me to create my latest project, Grandpa’s Photos.

Get the tissues ready, because this one is aiming right for the feels. Tucked away within a documentary on the history of Japanese cameras, this touching story of Yoko and Minoru Tanaka took us completely unawares.

We thought we were watching a mildly interesting and informative documentary... as it turns out, it was much more than that.

Chances are good you've never heard the term Mingi, but if you were born to one of the tribes in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, this age-old tribal tradition might have been your death sentence. These days, however, that is far less likely, and it's due almost entirely to the work of Kara tribesman Lale Labuko and his friend and photographer John Rowe.

It's true that the Internet can be a stupid and cruel place -- read any comment section on a controversial news piece for proof of that -- but it can also be a wonderful place that occasionally brings you to tears... in a good way.

This is a story about the best of the Internet: about a grieving father, a heartfelt request, and an overwhelming response.

Too often, photographs of life in a rural village in a distant country revolve around sadness, hunger and depravity, but rural village life can also be playful, full of joy, and beautiful in its simplicity. It's the latter of the two that Indonesian photographer Herman Damarher set out to capture.

Polish husband and father-of-two Sebastian Łuczywo is a business advisor for his day job. But when he's not at work, he's capturing incredibly heartwarming portraits of his family and their animals.

With his rural home in Poland serving as a backdrop for these images, his photographs of his family -- including his two four-legged children -- seem to be a conglomeration of many styles, from surrealism to straight up candid. And it’s this unique blend of styles, along with the intimate touch, that takes his photographs to the next level.

There are times when you come across a collection of images that no written words or powerful images can describe on their own. Such is the case with the heartfelt series, Lifelines.

Inspired by past projects, photographer Norah Levine teamed up with audio guru Gabrielle Amster and Animal Trustees of Austin’s 4PAWS (For People and Animals Without Shelter) program to document and tell the story of the connection between the homeless and their beloved pets.

The New York City subway can be a cold place, metaphorically speaking. Headphones, cell phones, that one Seamless ad they've no doubt already read 600 times, whatever their approach, people go to great lengths to avoid communicating with the other people in the car.

So what happens when one of those people breaks, not only the unwritten rule against talking, but touching! How do people react on the subway when a complete stranger falls asleep on their shoulder?

It started as a chance encounter on a train. Photographer Lindsay Morris was on her way back from a photo festival where she had been inspired by a seminar on photo essays, when she happened to sit next to Janice Di Joseph and her daughter, Ricchina.

Mother's Day is tomorrow, and so we leave you tonight with a touching reminder from Canon Canada to do something sweet for the mothers in your life.

Back in January, we featured the story of Anthony Carbajal, a California-based wedding photographer whose career came to an abrupt end when he was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. After the story broke, media journalist Avni Nijhawan created the above video that offers a touching portrait of Carbajal's life and struggles.

After having a close friend lose a one-year-old to cancer years ago, and watching her stepfather battle this all-too-prevalent beast today, Oklahoma–based photographer Lora Scantling was inspired.

Inspired to create an image, or a series of images, that show the strength of and give encouragement to those who are battling the disease, as well as those who are watching someone go through it.

It took photojournalist Jo-Anne McArthur 13 years to compile the photography found in her book We Animals, but it will take only moments for your emotions to run the gamut between deeply moved and sickened while scrolling through her work.

You might not know it if you watch too much TV, but there is a great deal of goodness in this human race of ours... and it runs deep. South African portrait photographer Albert Bredenhann discovered this in a big way recently when he was hired to do a photo shoot for a group of friends, one of which had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer.

That kind of photo shoot is touching in and of itself, but the group took the idea further than that when they all voluntarily shaved their heads ahead of the surprise portrait.

Everybody takes photos of their family, trying their best to keep a chronicle of their children as they grow up. They capture moments both mundane and momentous and store them away in what later becomes the family album (although it seems that might soon be a thing of the past).

But while everybody might make an effort to capture these memories, photographer Alain Laboile does so with an expertise behind the lens that has turned his own personal family album, a series called La Famille, into a heartwarming viral sensation.

If you don't want to cry today, we suggest you skip this one. That being said, for the love of all that is holy, please don't skip this one! The tears are more than worth it when you hear the story behind these touching and at times heart-wrenching daddy/daughter photos.

A portrait is a powerful thing. Programs like Help Portrait -- which is dedicated to spreading joy, inspiration and hope by taking portraits of people who have never had one taken before -- are easy proof of this. But just in case you find yourself in need of more proof, the If Only for a Second portrait project is here to provide it.

Photographers have the power to make dreams come true, and if you've ever doubted that statement you won't after watching the video above and hearing the story behind it -- a story that includes a sweet, sick woman's shy email, and a photographer's determination to come through no matter what.

A few commenters have on occasion joked that we need to add a "tenuous links to photography" category for those stories where, strictly speaking, there's not much photography involved. The video above might quality, but we ask your forgiveness ahead of time because, a) there is a link, and b) it is one of the most touching, uplifting and inspirational things we've seen in a long time.

Photographers around the country are banding together to figure out the best way to help out a once-prominent photojournalist who has ended up homeless and panhandling on the streets of Manhattan.

I’m not going to say that we flew down to Florida to get a picture, because we didn’t. We flew down to Florida to see my grandfather, who is 94-years-old and my son’s only living great-grandparent. All my own great-grandparents passed away long before I was born, as did my husband’s great-grandparents.

So I’m not saying that we flew down to Florida to take a picture, but I’m admitting we wanted one. A photograph of four generations, all alive at the same time. Proof that it had happened. Me, my son, my father, and his father.

Each year, UK retailer John Lewis releases a touching, moving and otherwise awesome Christmas advertisement that manages to moisten our eyes and get us in the Holiday spirit like none other.

Doing this requires that they constantly re-evaluate their approach and come up with new and creative ways to inspire and endear viewers to their message, and this year, that meant taking a step back and using animation techniques that'll hit you right in the nostalgia bone: hand drawing and stop-motion.

We dedicate a lot of time to finding and sharing relevant, inspirational and sometimes humorous stories with you here, and once in a while, we inadvertently help make something wonderful happen.

That was the case with the Anderson family, who recently got in touch with us to tell us how a simple photo tip we shared changed their lives for the better. With their permission, we're sharing that story with you.

The many-award-winning short film Paper Memories by filmmaker and photographer Theo Putzu came out three years ago, but we only stumbled across this brilliant piece recently. Put together from some 4,000 photos, this short stop-motion experience captures loneliness, hope and lost love in a beautifully sad and ultimately heart-warming way.

Photography can be a wonderful source of growth, healing and hope. Programs like this one at the VA in Palo Alto have helped PTSD-afflicted veterans cope with their condition, while the EYE AM program was trying to have children tell their stories on an international level.

EYE AM never raised the funding it needed, but another program devoted to helping children through photography has been going strong for a couple of years now, making a difference for children in need all over the United States. This program is called Pictures of Hope.

While photographer Richard Renadli was in the midst of his 2003 project, See America By Bus, where he was photographing groupings of strangers waiting in Greyhound bus stations, he began to think about exploring the idea of expanding on his group portraitures of strangers concept.  “To create spontaneous and fleeting relationships between complete strangers,” as he as stated.

NYC-based photographer Joy Mckinney has spent most of her life conforming to the norms she believed to be "socially correct." Her latest series, The Guardian, is about breaking through those norms and her own socially guarded personality in order to interact with strangers on the streets of New York in a real and meaningful way.

Redditor Steven Withey's grandfather Derek is an 87-year-old WWII veteran who served in the Royal Navy, and a little while back he showed his grandson a badly damaged Navy photo (of a photo) of himself as a 20-year-old.

He had showed him the photo in the hopes that his technologically savvy grandson could maybe touch it up a bit, but given the massive creases and tears he didn't have much hope. It turns out he needn't have worried, because in this particular case, Reddit came to the rescue.

When a huge meteor exploded over Russia back in February, the incident was captured by a large number of drivers who drive around with dashcams pointed out the front of their windshield. The story put a spotlight on the fact that dashcams are widely used in Russia due to the prevalence of insurance fraud.

Footage from Russian dashcams found online is often quite dark (figuratively, not literally), showing horrible accidents and tragedies. Not so with the video above -- it's a compilation of random acts of kindness captured by ordinary drivers.

Last year Philips ran a contest called Parallel Lines in which they asked people to create a three-minute short film using only six lines of dialogue: “What is that?”, “It’s a unicorn”, “Never seen one up close before”, “Beautiful”, “Get away, get away”, and “I’m sorry”. After more than 600 entries were submitted, director Ridley Scott selected the above film, titled "Porcelain Unicorn", as the winner.