Deep thoughts, photography edition

UPDATED. Scroll to the bottom of the post.

I had kind of a weird experience this week (I actually had quite a few weird experiences this week, but I'm only writing about this one).

Last week I held my breath and had a conversation with Alethea Cheng Fitzpatrick of Photosanity, who coaches parents taking pictures of their kids. I held my breath because pictures of my kids are a huge pain spot for me. I can never keep track of a camera, and I don't know how to take good pictures, and I just don't remember to even want to take pictures. And that causes an enormous amount of guilt for me. I feel like I should be taking pictures more, and should have this amazing record of my kids' lives.

Plus, and I wouldn't have admitted this before, it makes me feel inadequate that my ex-husband* takes pictures all the time, and he takes great pictures all the time, of the kids. I am jealous that he has all these pictures of the kids and I don't, and that he thinks in terms of taking pictures.

So I came into the conversation with Alethea with some dread, but she zeroed exactly in on my fears and quietly asked me a couple of questions that stood things on their head and reframed everything for me. And I let go. Of the guilt, and the idea that I can't take pictures, AND of the the idea that I need to take pictures or I'm not doing my job.

I felt fantastic. And like maybe thinking about buying another camera and trying it again.

The real test, though, was when I decided to order Christmas cards this week. (Yes, I'm one of those people who sends a photo card plus one of those long dopey letters.) Years ago I vowed to always include myself in the picture on the card so my friends could see how I was aging. So I needed a picture of me with the kids, and couldn't take it myself.

I asked my ex-husband to take it.

He was coming over to take the kids one afternoon anyway, and the three of us sat on my front porch, and Doug shot some shots with his phone, and the first one was perfect. And I thanked him and he said I was welcome and he sent me the photo and now I have this great shot of me with my kids.

A little clarity and self-forgiveness is a beautiful thing.

This has also inspired me to take next Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) to bond with my mom and take some pictures with her. It's been awhile since we've both been in the same shot. Instead of bonding by getting up at 5 and fighting the masses to buy "doorbusters," we'll have more fun getting my dad (who used to be a serious photographer) to take some shots of us together.

Photos and you. How do they go together?

 

* Here is my ex-husband's blog, for those of you who don't know him, but I put it down here instead of up there because it's Movember and he has a picture of his truly unfortunate facial hair right at the top of the page so I feel I need to warn you that it's NSFMDE (not safe for my delicate eyeballs) but if you need to click don't say I didn't warn you: LaidOffDad.org

 

UPDATE: By popular demand, here's the picture Doug took, except I cropped out the kids because I don't put pictures of them on the internet. So it's just me. But you can see my little one's fingers:

Comments

[Latte]

Photos and me go very well together...I love taking them and sharing them. My biggest problem right now is that Squirmy at 10.5 mths won't stay still long enough to get a good shot! Oh and he keeps grabbing the camera strap.
And there's also the guilt trip from mom " you havent sent any pictures for a while......."

[clio]

i'm sure the huffpo piece about "mom stays in the picture" will get mentioned. but, it inspired some friends and me to challenge one another to share pictures of us with out littles. it's hard. i'm not the weight i want to be and have done zilch with my hair lately. i'm not a mom who doesn't have time to shower (because my husband works from home, we have time, blah blah) but i still rarely see pictures of myself and think i look good.

i do struggle with my father in law, who spends most of his visits with our 19 month old trying to snap facebook-worthy pictures and then writing what he thinks are clever captions. he'll be in her face with the flash saying "just need my new profile pic!" and i want to scream about present mindedness and that jazz. he seems to care more about showing people he was here than actually being here.

so i do love photography and documenting our copper-topped lady's growth. i love it. we recently lost a whole slew of photos from a trip (during which she learned to walk and spent time with her cousins she rarely sees) and the sadness is heavy in my stomach. but i hate seeing evidence that i haven't totally gotten my crap together about my personal well-being. and i REALLY don't like grandpa's approach.

[Claudia]

As is typical for many women, I dislike myself in pictures. But I also lost my mom as a baby, and have so very few pictures of her, let alone of us and my brother and and and.
So I try to remember to get photographed with DD and hopefully DH. We're even visiting a photographer for some Christmas pictures. I'm looking forward to it, though not so much to seeing *me* in them. It's for everyone else.

I've also become bad about remembering to take pictures, and I really wish I'd taken a lot more video that I have.

[Meggan]

I have next to no photos of me with my baby (when he was a baby) because I took nearly all the photos then.

I really, really dislike that. My husband is getting better at this two+ years on, but it's a little late at this point - I can't go back and recapture those memories.

(This is a sore point for me.)

I'd really like to send out a Christmas card with our picture on it this year but we need to figure out how to get all of us into a single photo. Harder than it seems, for some reason.

[Moxie]

Meggan, individual photos all on the same card.

[hush]

"Years ago I vowed to always include myself in the picture on the card so my friends could see how I was aging." That's awesome.

I think there's a regional piece to it. I'm half Southern, and it seems normal to me to only put the kids' pictures on our holiday cards. Pretty much all the holiday cards from Southerners have only pictures of the kids. Hmm...

Photos are very important, and we take loads of them, but wow - do we need help organizing them.

[Laura]

I am the one who is ALWAYS behind the camera, so it's rare I get a picture with my kids that isn't a shaky mirror-imaged iPhone shot. I also am very camera shy right now because of all the typical feminine insecurities. SIGH.

But you know, my favorite picture of myself with my kids was a candid taken at a birthday party by the pro photographer (also a friend). I had arrived at the party feeling frumpy and gross. I hadn't done anything with my hair and I totally didn't want to be there. But the picture is gorgeous! It's just...Me. It's a picture that totally captures where I am in Motherhood. I actually LOOK like a mom, not a kid who is pretending to hack it (like I feel most of the time).

So, yeah. I really need to have more pictures taken of myself.

[SarahB]

That Huffington post piece awhile back about the mom staying in the picture really, really got to me--because I, like so many moms, am usually the one taking the picture. So I've been making a point to ask people to take pictures of my kid and me, and a friend shared some candid shots recently that literally cracked my heart open. I didn't know how my little boy and I looked sharing a special moment, and there it was.

[Lori]

My mom and dad both passed away a long while ago (when I was 12 and 25 years old - I'm 43 now). I treasure the pictures I have of the whole family - looking like they did everyday. It's nice to have the dress up formal pictures (I remember two pictures with all of us together), but I have very few of the adults in my family.

So now... I overdo it. I think of all the questions that I wish that I could ask my parents about my sisters and I when we were kids. I make scrapbooks, and I write about what's going on, and I have imperfect pictures of our whole family altogether. In fact, I think that my Christmas picture this year is going to be from an afternoon hike - where we're all dressed in outdoor hiking clothes (and I'm not talking about Columbia/North Face/fancy label type - I'm talking about the old t-shirts and sweat pants type). My husband is wearing a head buff (think Survivor) that makes him look like he has cancer, but there is an amazing view, all five of us have great smiles, and it captures that moment so well.

As for full family photo when you're the one usually holding the camera? I love love LOVE our little tripod. It's a Gorilla brand flexible tripod so we can attach it to tree branches, on uneven surfaces, or regular spots, and we use the self timer on our camera to get photos when no one else is around. This doesn't work when the kids are little, but now that my youngest is 7, we can usually get a good shot fairly easily.

And though I've rambled enough already, what I was trying to say is that even though my parents didn't have a whole lot of photos of themselves, they took typical snapshots of our family. These photos would never be hung in a gallery or win awards on their artistic merit, but I love having them. There is so much beautiful photography on the internet, and it's hard to compete when you expect your photos to look the same. So take photos, get them PRINTED, and your kids will have those to look at in the future.

[Celeste]

Eh. I gave up on photos a long time ago. I felt like a mother traitor for not making a baby book. The truth is, I just hate scrapbooking. I did take some pictures, and I did collect prints. We also had professional pics done a lot. My plan is to hand the photos over to my daughter and let her make The Book of Me. I think it's good for her to tell her own story. She can crop, edit, or enhance her childhood any way she wants to. I just bought her some scrapbooking tools this year and maybe this will be a good winter project, to get out photos and work with them. The next thing to do is get all of the phone pictures of her in one place so she can either make an online album of them or at least have them backed up someplace for another day. Photos are a job, and I have given myself permission for somebody else to do it. I do things other moms may not do, like volunteering with Scouts and making a quilt for her. So what if I don't make albums. I tucked her in last night and she said, "I feel so loved.". I'm cool with that.

[el-e-e]

I love this. I am not interested in learning that much about photography, or in paying a s*load of money for a professional to do it -- but I do get jealous of all the people who have gorgeous, professional-looking photos of their kids in matching white dresses in a field of green. lol

I take pictures with my phone, sometimes I remember to load them to the computer, and I thank God my DH backs it up religiously online. I am WAY behind on photo books/albums.

Confessing feels good. ;)

[rebecca]

Amen. I let my 3yo play with the camera lats night and managed to leave at leats one pic she took of me on the camera. Deleted the rest, mostly b/c they were blurry and only a little b/c they made me look fat. The mom in the pic article got to me too. Time to get me in the pic more often. This will be the first year in many that we aren't doing a family shot for the holiday card but maybe I can upload something clever from throughout the year to make do. Awesome and brave of you to let Doug take the pics. Bravo!

[Anon]

Taking pictures of kids can be a huge pain, especially when it's "important." They don't see the the importance of it (obviously, who can blame them?) so it's tough to get cooperation. I often see a Halloween or holiday picture and remember what a pain it was to get the photo. You need personal paparazzi!

[Rudyinparis]

Kind of odd this comes up, because I noticed just the other day that according to our refrigerator door, I don't exist. So it's been bugging me.

I used to do actually pretty well with taking photos and getting them into albums... and the girls love love love looking at those albums. But then I got--I'll be honest--kind of fed up and bitter that I was doing all that work so I kind of just stopped. It wasn't out of spite, really, more that it had come to be something that made me sad. I've been trying to take more photos these last months or so.

I'm still not in them, though.

[Dawn]

We take a lot of pictures, but we go in spurts of actually using the camera vs. snapping pictures with our iPhones.

I actually make a photo album of my kids each year for their grandmothers (using Shutterfly), and that's how I force myself to at least go through all the pictures every once in a while.

I definitely need to make more of an effort to be in the pictures every now and again.

[sbpdx]

I too am the photographer of the family. I am certainly an amateur, but I care about composition and light and capturing moments. If I want a picture of me & my son, I have to tell my husband to take one; so it ends up not being candid at all. I honestly don't care what my hair or clothes look like on film. I'm just sad that there are very few pictures of me & our son that reflect the spontaneous moments of our relationship.

[K]

I love taking photos, but I need and want to have more photos of me and my husband with our kids. I'm always the one taking the photo and husband is the one trying to make them smile for the photo, but really, it's because neither one of likes the way we look.

I *know* that someday our kids will want to see photos of us when we were all young. Lately I'm trying to get past this by 1.) silence the pointless procrastinating excuses (but I need to lose 10 pounds first or but I'm not wearing makeup) and buck up and take the darn photo but 2.) give myself permission not to look at it. I know it's a ridiculous form of denial. But right now I need my kids to have these photos and I'm not ready to deal with the other stuff.

[Rbelle]

For our engagement, I bought my husband a really nice digital camera (not a point and shoot), and it's been his primary hobby ever since. For mother's day last year, he ended up buying me a nicer camera than the point and shoot I wasn't using (because it took terrible pictures), so we're pretty well covered.

And yet I end up still feeling both like we don't get enough pictures of our daughter, and that we have far too many of her. The former feeling comes, I think, from feeling like her babyhood passed so quickly. Yes, I might have a dozen photos of one day with her in one particular outfit, but it's not enough. They don't capture all the wonderful moments about her as an infant and early toddler that I'm already starting to forget. I envy those people who thought to take at least one picture of their kid every day (except that when my daughter was new, I could NOT put her down for five minutes to take a picture). But it also seems like, now that she's older and changing less quickly, we have so many shots that are essentially the same. Here she is walking in the park, on the beach, out hiking, at the park again, crouching to play in the dirt. Her expression is often the same, and while we've gotten some great shots between us, they still fail in some way to capture what I really want to remember about her, the funny faces she makes at me, the way she pretends to pick things out of her books and eat them, the crazy things that come out of her mouth. It's like I can't get enough pictures of her, and yet they're never enough on their own, all at the same time.

I hate to be in pictures, but grudgingly let my husband take them for posterity. And we always get a holiday family picture, either taken by my husband with a timer, or in a professional studio (although that's never the one we send out as cards).

I did want to share one thing that we do that might be weird as she gets older, but that I love, and that someone else might find worthwhile. Every year for her birthday (ok, there's only been two so far), I upload some pictures to Snapfish and make a photo collage poster - 20 x 30, a really big one. We pick one photo from every month since her last birthday. This lets us both track how she's changed over the year, and include pictures that might otherwise not be considered for display - pics of her sleeping, or looking goofy, or crying or mad. If there are cues we can include to indicate how old she is, like picking one of her in her Halloween costume or in front of the Christmas tree, we do that. Then we put the poster in a frame on her wall, covering up the previous year's. I figure when she's 18, I'll have over two hundred printed photos of her documenting her life. Of course, I won't have the room to display them all, but if all else fails, I can cut up the posters and scrapbook the pictures once the project is "over." Or maybe I'll take the "best of" each year and do a collage of 18 photos for one final poster. Best of all, knowing we have this projected planned for each birthday ensures that we get some pictures of her every month.

[the milliner]

Good relationship with photography. Bad relationship with organizing the photos. Photos of me with L tend to be taken with my phone. And I've actually got quite a few that I like. Sometimes I go through a period where I forget to take those kinds of shots. But usually it's a post or comment here that reminds me to take more.

I've been trying to take more shots of L & DH too. The thing that's the hardest for me to get is shots of L looking into the camera. I don't even care if he smiles. He just doesn't like having the attention on him. So, I don't push it (except for Halloween this year. I made his costume, and man, I wanted a photo of him in it, from the front!) Luckily he obliged for the Halloween photo. He looked like a very serious and contemplative lion...but that made it that much cuter.

He's almost 4 1/2, and I'm still working on his baby album. One day...

[hedra]

Cool, and glad you got free to a good place with pictures.

I noticed I wasn't in the pics at some point, and have since asked ep to take at least one pic of me at every family event at which we take pics. And I also hand the camera off to the kids to let them run around and take pics, and get some horrible up-the-nose shots of me that way, but you know? that's the angle they see me at. :)

I have big gaps around the first couple of years of each kid, because I was usually behind the camera and my brain was full.

I also have no pictures of any period in which I was suffering PPD (funny how the idea of asking someone to take a picture of me with the kids when I was in the midst of PPD just was null - it wasn't avoid, it wasn't reject, just simply wiped from my mind like it had never existed; plus during those periods ep was pretty much bridging fundamental needs, so photography was waaaaaaay down the list of essentials).

My photos are pretty much on the computer and backed up to dropbox in case of disaster. I do a lot of pics of our gardens (More now that I have macro capability), and a lot of pics of Mr B riding (because he likes that and I get to share them with his three horse-loving aunts via FB, who would otherwise have little connection opportunity based on location). Otherwise, it is mostly big events. Mr G doesn't like his pic taken, Miss R would rather be taking the pics, and Miss M is in constant motion so pics of her are usually of the back of her head as she runs through the scene.

We did find a fantastic photographer who takes brilliant, sensitive, 'showing who we are at our best', and 'looking alive enough to get up and walk out of the frame like some Harry Potter prop' group photos. We visit her every few years to get a group formal shot. Pricey, but worth it. My favorite picture of anyone in my family is one she took during a break in a shoot, where ep sat down with one-year-old Miss R behind the reflector thingy - both in black turtlenecks, she was looking up at him with the serious and thoughtful Daddy Love expression, and he had his face tilted down to her, so you can just see his profile in shadow, and her face is illuminated looking up at him. Serious LOVE. That one is in a big frame at the top of the stairs. Most of the photos since are still on my computer. ... I like the idea of making a 'book of me' project for them. Someday.

[Kate]

You look fantastic!

[Monica]

You are so beautiful! Love the picture and the story behind it.

[Marcia at Organising Queen]

I love that pic!

I was very bad at being in the pics because I'm behind the camera until I made a conscious choice this year to set a monthly goal to be in pics.

It's gotten easier as the months have gone by and from Jan - Feb where there were only 1 or 2 bad pics, to now when I have LOTS of pics of me in them.

I do think it's worth it for us to get in the pics with our kids.

[converse jack purcell]

Takk fyrir alla vinnu þína á þessari vefsíðu. Kate finnst virkilega framkvæma rannsókn og það er mjög auðvelt að sjá hvers vegna. Flest okkar heyra allt um lífleg leiðir sem þú gefur mjög mikilvægar ábendingar í gegnum þennan vef bloggi og jafnvel mæla með svar frá fólki um þetta áhyggjuefni en einföld prinsessan okkar hefur verið að kenna mikið. Hafa gaman með the hvíla af the ár. Þú hefur verið að stunda mjög gott starf.

[veste north face]

Q: Start a war with someone weak and get your military trained at best conditions.R: Absolutely not. Using Palestinians for live target practicing does not

[MBT Shoes]

trendsetters such as MTV's Serena Altschul, are seen in Diane dresses. Both Von Furstenbergs will be at Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco today. "When I first started I was in my 20s and I was the youngest (in the company). Now I'm 50 and I'm the oldest," said

[Santaiajabos]

I have not long come back from China after being sent by work twice in NovemberI will make sure I have my camera on me more as i saw so many of these types of thgnisThe one that stuck in my head was4 seasoned very special dish i didnt try it sounded boring compared to the smake , toad , sheeps testicles rotten looking eggs etc etc etc that i did try

[Sabi]

my camera donset show up in the asoft menu, when i open it only my C drive shows, my camera is connected and all, i can open the folders in the camera to see the pix but it donset show up in any drive only as a portable device

[Henry]

You've changed from jpeg mode to RAW.Don't panic.Download Adobe DNG covtorner. Convert your CR2s to DNG and open them with your usual software.You don't say what model of camera you are using. If its a DSLR then the image qualty control is usally in the first menu with a L M or S prefix.

[chemise burberry femme]

Dieser Artikel führt meine Seele! Thank you for sharing.

[Auth]

Bridget Allen - You did a wonderful job on these pcriutes!!! Although I may be biased considering shes my sister (well sister in law but close enough!!!) WONDERFUL PICS!!!June 11, 2008 3:18 pm