*I am participating in Momalom’s Five for Five Challenge. Today’s topic is pictures.
Freeze. Smile. Click.
It sounds easy enough. A three-second pause for a photographic payoff to last a lifetime? Sounds like a reasonable trade to me.
Isn’t this why we take pictures? We want to capture the warmth and beauty so we can re-visit the contours and edges of those special moments. We want to snap that breathtaking view on our must-visit list so we can look back and remember and say, I was there. We want tangible evidence that we showed up to honor someone on their big day.
It makes sense because the truth is, who knows if and when we’ll have another chance.
The irony of ironies is, as much as I’d like to preserve the memories of special occasions, I often forget to take pictures. Having a camera on hand does not ensure photos will be taken.
I try. Really, I do. I have big dreams of going for full color, but instead I get less than gray.
My favorite subject, my son, does not help matters. I freeze frame on his busybody self and I’ll capture a shoe, an arm or worse, a total stranger. I’ve missed out on oodles of photo-ops in his childhood and my memory is full of vivid snapshots I can only visualize but cannot see in front of me.
My son, the mini moving target. He has conditioned me to a large degree. He runs, I chase after him. He falls, I rush to him. He hides, I go looking for him.
He, unlike many of us, has not yet built up a tolerance for posing. Freeze for a click? Not a lick. Though I know this won’t always be the case, I believe things are as they should be.
It’s futile to try and capture him in any way. The likes of him? They are meant to be free. Never black and white. Always a full range of the spectrum with constant shades of gray.
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Do you like taking pictures?
Do you like being photographed?
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*Day three of the Five for Five Momalom challenge. Participants will post once each day for five days in response to five topics: change, words, pictures, age, listening.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
It seems the more engrossing the moment is, the harder it is to step back, step out of the frame, and pull out the camera. You’ve painted a more accurate picture of him with words, anyway.
My husband is the chief photographer in our house. My favorite shots of his are the candid ones, where the kids are being kids, full of color and all the shades of gray, as you so beautifully put it.
Yes, my busybodies leave me with lots of shots of blurry arms and legs and hair and chins. But I keep trying, keep trying, keep trying, to capture on film (so to speak) what I have memorized with my eyes. Love this, Belinda.
i love taking pictures. it’s how i make a living
that said, i don’t like taking posey family type portraits but prefer photographing real life, people interacting together, emotion at play.
and i have a 3yo boy that is all go, run, jump…always a blur.
I love this. I’m the official photographer, which results in my not being in any pictures. While I know this is partly conscious – I hate photographs of myself – it makes me sad, because I do want my children to have a record of our moments together. I must make more of an effort to be in front of the camera too. xx
Sweet. I take pictures while no one is watching…I like them as they are. So it may be …a shoe, an arm or worse, but in the end I capture a great moment to look back on. xo.
My favorites shots are ones where my daughter is not aware I am taking the picture. As she has gotten older, she loves to pose. But when I catch that one shot when she isn’t, it is like pure gold.
“…re-visit the contours and edges of those special moments”
Yup. Sometimes I really do want to re-visit and, like you, the only thing I have to look at are the pictures in my mind because I DIDN’T TAKE PICTURES AGAIN!! (Even though, also like you, I had my camera–the real one, not the iPhone in my back pocket) at the ready!
I think we both ought to work on just pushing record on the FlipVideoCam and letting it roll on for a few minutes. That way we’ll be able to re-visit, and we won’t have to worry about catching the busybodys’ WHOLE bodies! (I often get a shoe or the back of a head in my shots!)