But it wasn't just the quality that was lacking. Oh, it was lacking alright. I'll get to that in a minute. The bigger issue was that by the time it was all over, I wanted to disown my children. If you read my last post, you saw me gushing over them and trying to bottle their enthusiasm. If their enthusiasm had been in a bottle yesterday, I would have thrown it onto the pavement so it would shatter into millions of teeny, tiny little pieces. If you read that post, you know I love them dearly. But I wasn't feeling the love yesterday. AT ALL.
I thought I had planned it perfectly. It was a gorgeous day. Sunny. Fall colors bursting all around us. I had both of them shower so they'd have nice, clean hair. I had done the laundry earlier in the day so their little outfits were clean, wrinkle-free and coordinated. I had even scouted out a location in the neighborhood. Pretty wildflowers. Fall leaves in the background. A couple of waterfalls. Very picturesque. What could possibly go wrong? Well, for starters, the girls and I showed up. It pretty much went downhill after that.
In an effort to avoid an ugly incident, I told the girls before we left that I had remembered last year's photo shoot and how badly it went and that my expectation was they this year's would be different. Well, it was different. It was actually worse. Last year, Kate goofed off the whole time and made silly faces every time the photographer tried to take a nice shot. I was getting so angry with her because her sister was always perfectly posed with a sweet smile. If Kate had just cooperated, we could have been done in 15 minutes. But no, she is exactly like I was as a kid so she was intent on ruining every shot with an idiotic expression on her face. I know that I must have threatened her with spankings at least four times during that hour-long shoot. I was certainly embarrassed by her ridiculous behavior but was also embarrassed by my own in front of the photographer. It was just all so stressful. With photo shoots, you get whatever you get. You only have the time the photographer is present to get whatever pictures you're going to get. And during the time she was there, Kate was acting like she had eaten 216 doughnuts shortly before the girl arrived to take the pictures. I decided during that experience that I would be the one to take the pictures for the next year's card.
So, here we were, roughly a year later. I was actually confident when we drove up to our scenic location - stupidly confident it turns out. I had explained my expectations and felt as though they clearly understood what kind of behavior I was looking for. They would be the perfect little children I was raising and obey my orders with and diligence and reverence. Once we got out of the vehicle however, Kate immediately ran off almost completely out of earshot. I hadn't even gotten the camera out of my car and she had already spazzed out. And Meg was pretty much jammed up my rear end - a tactic she has adopted to try and win favor with me if her sister is misbehaving.
"I stayed with you, Mama, isn't that so good?"
"Kate ran off but I did what you asked me to do, right, Mama?"
Yes, you little brown-noser, that's correct. Anyway, I called after Kate and demanded she come back up to a nice spot in front of some flowers. She did, so I felt myself calming down. She walked right up to Meg and I asked them to look natural. Well, of course, they don't know what that means - how to look "natural". Every time you take a child's picture they are begged to smile so they don't know how to stand there and not have a phony grin plastered across their face.
I asked for a few different poses.
Hold Hands.
Goes reasonably well. They can do that. Whew!
Put your arms around each other.
Kate puts Meg in a stranglehold. Meg screams at her sister. I scream at Kate.
Sit down back-to-back.
That means don't face each other.
That means looks away from each other and touch backs.
They finally get the pose, but since both kids have been cursed with my deplorable posture, they are both completely slumped over their legs.
Straight backs!
Kate slumps further.
Tall backs like in ballet.
Meg raises her shoulders as though she's in a Broadway musical having to over-emote the act of shrugging. At the same time, her eyes get really wide and her eyebrows almost touch the top of her hairline.
Relax and just kind of lean your backs into each other.
Kate flops back onto Meg so that Meg's chin is in the mulch.
I decided to try a new location. Every time I found a nice spot, the sun was such that it was directly in their eyes if they had their backs to some nice background scenery. I tried the ol' keep-your-eyes-closed-until-I-count-to-three-and-then-open-them-and-smile routine, but you can just imagine how those shots turned out.
I found a shady place and made a couple of adjustments to my camera so the pictures wouldn't be too dark. We tried the back-to-back thing again (because apparently I like chaos), this time with better results. I think I only had to yell 5-6 times (in the spirit of the holidays...). The main problem with this particular set-up was the precision of my lens. I didn't really notice it until I got home and uploaded the shots to my computer, but there were several weeds in the area. One in particular was positioned right in the foreground of the shot. Therefore, I have 17 pictures of this perfectly crisp tall, gangly weed with my two fuzzy children in the background. The lens captured every crease and dew drop of that weed. It's really quite lovely. It's just not quite what I had in mind for our Christmas card. ("Weed" wish you a merry Christmas anyone?)
After my inadvertent nature shoot, we moved to an area on some nice big rocks with the girls' backs to a waterfall. By this time, we had probably been at this thing for at least 30-45 minutes so the girls were really past their threshold for good behavior. I can't really blame them. I guess I should say that I shouldn't really blame them. To say I "cant" blame them gives off the impression that I didn't blame them which I absolutely did.
Kate started up with her crazy faces again and so an eager-to-please Meg joined right in (I guess this time she was eager to please Kate and not her Mama). When they would finally calm down, something would happen like Kate would step in front of Meg accidentally or Meg would sneeze. At no point were both girls looking in the same direction at the same time with both eyes open and a decent expression on their face. If ever there was a time for a Christmas miracle, this was it.
Also hindering this process was the fact that somehow between last year's shoot and this one, Meg has forgotten how to smile. Meg is actually quite photogenic. But, I have no idea what she was trying to accomplish yesterday. It was like a scared robot doing an impression of Jack Nicholson's "Joker". She was completely stiff and unnatural. She looked ridiculous. So on the off chance that Kate actually had a nice expression on her face instead of her best Phyllis Diller impression, Meg looked like a deer in headlights. A drunk deer.
At the end of it all, none of these things ended up mattering. The quality of the pictures I took just wasn't up to par. I mentioned my encounter with the weed, but I also never did get my settings right for the light I was in. I was so annoyed when I uploaded the images to my computer because even if I had gotten one decent shot (I didn't), I'd have to Photoshop the crap out of it to make it usable. So on top of being angry with my rambunctious children, I was depressed that I have these nice lenses and no immediate talent for using them. I do have an appointment with a photographer on December 2nd, but I was hoping to be done with my cards by then. I guess now she will have to witness me losing my patience all over again just as she did last year. This means, of course, that my Christmas cards will go out late this year since I likely won't even have proofs back until at least a week after that. So, until then, please enjoy some of my favorites from yesterday.
*I deleted the glorious shots of the weed before I had the idea to turn this into a post, so you won't get to experience the beauty and splendor that I captured.
God bless us everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment