Family Photos!

I love photography and capturing special moments via camera.  As mentioned in previous posts, my favorite type of photography is "documentary style":  I love capturing personalities, etc.  This is done best by being "sneaky" with the camera and by not asking the subject to "say cheese" or "look at the camera."  But rather, I follow the subject around, becoming part of the background, and snap snap snap.

Luke doing "school" outside.

Remember this one of Abbey expressively telling me something.

However, sometimes friends ask for "family photos" and I oblige by taking some "posed" photos.  But, my favorites are always the ones I take after the "formal" ones--the ones that I capture of them interacting with one another, etc.  Or, if they are ok with it, my favorite way to take their picture is to have them interact doing a fun activity together and photograph them in the process.  But still, most request more "formal" family photos.

You would think that I would apply this same principle on taking "family photos" for taking my own family group photo.  I mean, rather than set up the self-timer and take a photo of all of us together saying "cheese" in the direction of an un-manned camera, perhaps I would get a little more creative and sneaky and take a photo of us interacting together.  Still yet, that is very difficult when just using a self timer.  Nonetheless, we attempted to take some family photos via our camera's self-timer recently.  It did not go so well.  Wait--let me adjust that sentence.  It went well for all of us---except for Abbey.  Miss Abbey wanted nothing to do with having her photo taken by the invisible photographer.  I have learned in taking her photo, that you have to be careful how you approach the situation.

For example, here was the result of some sweet volunteer at her AWANAs club taking her photo (which became part of a snowflake ornament).  

Ha!   Plus, she recently put us through a 3-4 week period where she was "testing" us.  I think this is what most call part of the "terrible twos"; however, we experienced it later with her than we had experienced it with Luke.  Thankfully, we have our sweet, mostly obedient Abbey back and it appears we are through that period.  But, when we were attempting to take photos of our family together, it wasn't ideal that she was in the middle of the "testing us" period.  I share this post because the situation was pretty comical and the photos ended up telling a bit of a story when I looked back at them.

Picture one.  This is the one that I took when we first arrived to our location.  Really, it was the only chance Abbey gave us.  Can you tell how happy Abbey is about getting her photo taken by the invisible photographer?  It really is pretty funny when you look at it that we are even all (except Abbey) smiling at no-one.   Luke has his best fake smile going on.  And Luke and I are leaning in a bit much.

"Okay Abbey, we will just get photos of Luke with us then."  

Abbey pouting as we took the 3-person-family photos.  As she pouted, we were begging her kindly to join us.

The entire photo session adventure was pretty funny really.  When we were on this bridge taking our photos, apparently, everyone wanted to use it to cross.  There was non-stop activity on this bridge.   So, here we were all set up, with our imaginary photographer (tripod) snapping photos.  This involved me running back and forth from the camera (to push compose the shot and press the button) to the spot where we were posing in between passers-by traveling across the bridge.  It was time to move from this location.  

Let's try a new location.  3 of us are laughing---one is not amused.

She tried so hard to pretend to be sad.  

We kind of got a normal-ish photo together.  Abbey is singing something and Luke looks like a statue trying so hard to have a "good smile."  The "fake smile" is why I don't like these posed photos.  When Luke genuinely smiles, he never looks like that.  Such a sweet boy though---trying so hard!

Okay--enough of the posing.  Here are some pictures I captured as Drew was just interacting with the kids:

Wow---a smile!  There's our always-smiling Abbey!

So, this is where I break the news to all of you that may normally get a Christmas card from us. Unfortunately, there won't be one this year--this was our attempt for a family photo for the card.  But, I plan on writing a Merry Christmas blog post from our family to yours as Christmas gets a little closer.   :-)