Photo by: Stephanie Blue (True Blue Photography)
Natalie Endozo, the founder of NatyCrops, was a software engineer for 26 years. But her passion was working with photographs and, later, digital photos. While holding a regular job, she started helping people with their photo projects. A cousin encouraged her to become an independent consultant. “Why not get paid for it?”, she said, “You’re already doing the work!” She created NatyCrops in 2007, formalized it in 2011 and is now an independent consultant for FOREVER (a digital memory keeping company) and Creative Memories (a traditional scrapbooking company). She retired from software engineering in 2016 to focus her efforts in growing NatyCrops.
Her “WHY” came in 2016 when she digitized her aunt’s sepia-toned photograph of three individuals (the three featured in the NatyCrops homepage). That photograph was a revelation to Natalie in many ways. She learned that one woman was her grandmother, the other was the grandmother to the cousins who she was close to and the man was the great-uncle who followed a woman to South America. If Natalie’s aunt hadn’t told the story of the people in that photograph, she would never have had a face for her grandmother, nor known she has Spanish-speaking relatives!!! It also made Natalie realize that people need to be encouraged to tell their story… or the stories die with them.