An Existential Photo Crisis

I blame my stepmom.

A few weeks ago, she started asking me to send her a photo of our family so that she could start working on her holiday card (she usually includes pics of me and my siblings and our families).  Of course, we have virtually zero pictures of all four of us together. There was a crappy one from apple-picking, an unflattering one from the summer. Very slim pickings. It’s not easy getting us all in one picture. Very seldom do we have the extra hands to pass off the camera.  Anyways, my mom came to town and we made it a point to remedy that situation. Not spectacular, but it’ll do.

Of course, that got me thinking about my own holiday cards. It’s too early, of course, but I was now already on that mental path.  I realized that I have nothing remotely recent of the kids that I could use.  How is that even possible?

While I’m still taking a significant number of photos (think 700+ for October), the subject matter has shifted as of late.  When the kids were younger, I would take photos of them all the time, doing basically nothing. Everyday photos.  Tons in the backyard, multiple different days at our favorite playgrounds, etc..  Now, I do that a lot less.  I think I got bored/burned out by the backyard photo sessions. Yeah yeah, I thought, they’re going down the slide again. I only have 8,000 versions of that shot.  A lot of things felt that way.  Been there, done that.   So more of my recent photos have been of events.  A gymnastics class, a birthday party.  Sometimes even just doing silly things around the house.  But they were action shots. Things happening.  Capturing events and moments. Subtly different from simply taking pictures of the kids. Does that make any sense?

At the same time, although I didn’t realize that the two issues were probably related, I have had the feeling that the overall quality of my photos was going down. There were still some good shots, but a lot of them felt very mediocre.  So much of it just trying frantically to catch the moment, not focusing on actually taking good photos.

So, this afternoon, I decided to go back to what worked and do a little photo session in the backyard.  The late-afternoon sun was indirect lighting, the three oak trees in my yard have started to give up their leaves.  I admit that having the kids leave their jackets off was an artistic choice that was a touch inappropriate for the weather, but everyone did fine with their pink cheeks and red noses.  And I was really happy with some of the shots. They may or may not end up as the official holiday card choices, but at least now I have options. Here are some of my favorites.  Even the imperfect ones made me happy.