June 16, 2012

AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK

As a mum of three, i am constantly trying to get one - just one - photo of the three of them together.
Ideally this photo would be snot/grime/food free and they will all be smiling, or at least look as if they don't want to kill each other.
Has is happened yet? No.
How long have i been trying? 14 months.
So, i thought i'd share what happened today on the sofa.
They were cuddling, smiling, being FRIENDS! Then I take my lens cap of and this happens...









but then, we got there in the end.... (ish) Miss Florence stop gurning & Miss India, look at me goddammit! Ah. I give up.


3 comments:

  1. In a way I'm glad you got these shots over a shot of them all looking and smiling, because hopefully in years to come you'll look back at these photos and r,ember the real them, showing their true personalities. I am understand that sometimes I would be great to have one photo that was perhaps a bit calmer and neater, but I love these!

    This is a subject or something I feel passionately about, I won't bore you too much, but I wrote my dissertation on this subject! I wrote about the family album and how it is highly constructed to show what we want people to see, and this is sometimes not a real portrait of the subject. For example photos like these would often be discarded over more formal, posed portraits, but looking back they don't really show the subjects in their true light!

    There was an advert a while ago for the cloud computer or whatever, where a family were trying to get a group photo, but none of the kids would sit still or smile nicely, instead they were pulling silly faces and being themselves. So in the end the mum uses the computer to photoshop a 'perfect' picture together of the family to show and send to people! To me that is terrible, that they would rather share a fake photo rather than a photo portraying the family as it really was! Keeping up appearances indeed! Sorry I've ranted on about an advert, but as I said im quite passionate about this sort of thing!

    This isn't to say that you having one nice photo of them all being friends would be bad, as you said a minute before the camera that what they were like, but I think its great they want to show off for the photo and show their funny personalities!

    Anyway I shall stop rambling away on your blog! But your kids look great and so happy! X

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  2. You ramble away lovely (not that it is rambling!) as I am 100% behind you!
    I so remember that ad too and i remember how irritating i found it - the mum was cutting & splicing pics of each of them, gelling them all together? I hated that!
    I can still remember, as a young slip of a thing obviously ;) the excitement (and pure hell due to my impatient self) of waiting a WEEK for your photo's to be developed. Those photos actually captured the moments and not just the perfect ones. Deleting? We didn't know what that meant!!
    Great subject for a dissertation, very interesting!

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    Replies
    1. exactly! it pains me so much that I can't afford to use film anymore really! I used it all the way through university for my course, and I'm still new to this digital malarkey! but that's why i try my hardest to capture all the moments of theo's life, big and small, and not just the happy momentous occasions. There is definite beauty in imperfections!

      So glad you wrote this post, makes me remember what I feel passionately about! And yes I actually really enjoyed writing my dissertation, which is good as it took bloody ages!

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