Thursday - The Christmas Photo
Nov. 29th, 2007 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking about how taking pictures of children is not as easy as it sounds like it would be. Most small kids are naturally cute, so you would think it would be easy to capture that innate cuteness with a camera. It turns out that there is a lot of work and patience involved.
I have not had good luck with the pictures of my son taken by professional photographers. He always has an apprehensive expression on his face and the angle is always one that just exactly fails to flatter him. I finally decided that I can use my own camera and get the same mediocre results for a lot less money. The day after Thanksgiving while the rest of America was out shopping, I decided to take some pictures of my son to see if one of them might be nice enough to send out with my Christmas cards this year.
First, I needed a nice background. I decided to take advantage of the natural light and go outside. I selected one of the boxwood trees in my front yard and shook all the dead pine needles and sweetgum leaves out of it, because they looked really bad in last year's Christmas photo. Then, because I have yet to unpack my holiday decorations, I strung some green and gold Mardi Gras beads in the branches to make the shrub look more festive. I put an old wooden chair in front of the decorated boxwood and tossed a green tablecloth over it to cover it up so it wouldn't look like the old weathered thing that it is. Last year, I used a bath towel for the same purpose, but in the final photo it looked just like a bath towel in front of a boxwood tree with dead pine needles in it, and I though at tablecloth would look classier.
Finally, I told my toddler to grab a teddy bear so I could take his picture. I picked out the most Christmassy-looking teddy bear he has, one wearing a red scarf around its neck. My son insisted on bringing his other teddy bear along to keep it company, and then the four of us took off for the front yard. I put my 3 subjects on the chair and began shooting pictures.
For the next hour, I snapped picture after picture to increase my odds of getting the right one. When I finally loaded them off of the camera to review them, I found a lot of images, but most were not what I had in mind. Many the shots wound up with were endearing, but they weren't exactly, send-out-in-the-Christmas-cards material, many because you couldn't exactly see his face in them. In others, it looked like he might have been shooting an obscene finger gesture at the camera.
The Mardi Gras beads proved too tempting not to play with, and ended up being kind of a distraction. I guess the idea of facing forward when the shiny beads were behind the chair didn't make much sense to him.
My son and the bears actually all had a good time together. The three of them seemed to have a lot of things to talk about, though at one point he and the tan bear had a spat and wouldn't talk to each other, at least until the bear took back what he said to my son. I think the bear called me fat, and I'm glad my little boy stood up for me.
There were some occasion when my son decided to wander away to do other things. Sitting in a chair holding cute stuffed animals is only amusing for so long for a little boy.
I reached the point where I just considered sending out pictures of the teddy bears, who were at least capable of sitting still for a photo
When we finally finished, Mom, boy and bears were all exhausted.
There were a lot of near misses shot that day. In many of the photos everything was right except for my son's expression. He is like his father, in that he can't fake a smile. When he smiles, he has to mean it. For my husband, I've found that flashing a bare breast or making an off color suggestion will get me the kind of sweet, beatific, natural smile that looks good in a picture. Neither of these things, however, is appropriate or effective with a 3 year old.
Still, I found one or two that looked like they might work, or at least.
But then, when I saw this one, I knew I had my winner. This was taken after I called it quits, and my son decided that he wanted to take a few more pictures because he was finally enjoying himself. Fine, I thought, a couple more. May as well.
Sure, if you look closely you can see that the background looks less like a Christmas tree and more like a shrub with some Mardi Gras beads tossed into it. But if you are the sort of person to point that out, I'm going to call you a Grinch and a Scrooge combined. For a mom on a budget with a hard-to-photograph kid, I think this isn't half bad.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
I have not had good luck with the pictures of my son taken by professional photographers. He always has an apprehensive expression on his face and the angle is always one that just exactly fails to flatter him. I finally decided that I can use my own camera and get the same mediocre results for a lot less money. The day after Thanksgiving while the rest of America was out shopping, I decided to take some pictures of my son to see if one of them might be nice enough to send out with my Christmas cards this year.
First, I needed a nice background. I decided to take advantage of the natural light and go outside. I selected one of the boxwood trees in my front yard and shook all the dead pine needles and sweetgum leaves out of it, because they looked really bad in last year's Christmas photo. Then, because I have yet to unpack my holiday decorations, I strung some green and gold Mardi Gras beads in the branches to make the shrub look more festive. I put an old wooden chair in front of the decorated boxwood and tossed a green tablecloth over it to cover it up so it wouldn't look like the old weathered thing that it is. Last year, I used a bath towel for the same purpose, but in the final photo it looked just like a bath towel in front of a boxwood tree with dead pine needles in it, and I though at tablecloth would look classier.
Finally, I told my toddler to grab a teddy bear so I could take his picture. I picked out the most Christmassy-looking teddy bear he has, one wearing a red scarf around its neck. My son insisted on bringing his other teddy bear along to keep it company, and then the four of us took off for the front yard. I put my 3 subjects on the chair and began shooting pictures.
For the next hour, I snapped picture after picture to increase my odds of getting the right one. When I finally loaded them off of the camera to review them, I found a lot of images, but most were not what I had in mind. Many the shots wound up with were endearing, but they weren't exactly, send-out-in-the-Christmas-cards material, many because you couldn't exactly see his face in them. In others, it looked like he might have been shooting an obscene finger gesture at the camera.
The Mardi Gras beads proved too tempting not to play with, and ended up being kind of a distraction. I guess the idea of facing forward when the shiny beads were behind the chair didn't make much sense to him.
My son and the bears actually all had a good time together. The three of them seemed to have a lot of things to talk about, though at one point he and the tan bear had a spat and wouldn't talk to each other, at least until the bear took back what he said to my son. I think the bear called me fat, and I'm glad my little boy stood up for me.
There were some occasion when my son decided to wander away to do other things. Sitting in a chair holding cute stuffed animals is only amusing for so long for a little boy.
I reached the point where I just considered sending out pictures of the teddy bears, who were at least capable of sitting still for a photo
When we finally finished, Mom, boy and bears were all exhausted.
There were a lot of near misses shot that day. In many of the photos everything was right except for my son's expression. He is like his father, in that he can't fake a smile. When he smiles, he has to mean it. For my husband, I've found that flashing a bare breast or making an off color suggestion will get me the kind of sweet, beatific, natural smile that looks good in a picture. Neither of these things, however, is appropriate or effective with a 3 year old.
Still, I found one or two that looked like they might work, or at least.
But then, when I saw this one, I knew I had my winner. This was taken after I called it quits, and my son decided that he wanted to take a few more pictures because he was finally enjoying himself. Fine, I thought, a couple more. May as well.
Sure, if you look closely you can see that the background looks less like a Christmas tree and more like a shrub with some Mardi Gras beads tossed into it. But if you are the sort of person to point that out, I'm going to call you a Grinch and a Scrooge combined. For a mom on a budget with a hard-to-photograph kid, I think this isn't half bad.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
this isn't half bad.
Date: 2007-11-29 07:18 pm (UTC)Re: this isn't half bad.
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Date: 2007-11-29 09:50 pm (UTC)Deck the halls with beads and boxwood!
Falalala, lala, la, la!
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Date: 2007-11-29 08:05 pm (UTC)which went into all the xmas cards.
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Date: 2007-11-29 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-29 08:32 pm (UTC)And those near misses were great, even if they're not sendable. :P
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