I have no idea what I actually look like. Oh, I have mirrors in the house, but those images are fleeting. Pictures on Facebook, though, are forever, and thanks to my sister's Photoshop skills, every member of our family has an incredibly inflated sense of our own attractiveness.
Who needs to lose weight? I can just have Sami shave off a few pounds with a few quick clicks of her mouse. She can even give me makeup and fix my hair. She has, in the past, even cut and pasted my open eyes from one picture on to my head in another picture.
If you look through our family album, you'll think we have a whale of a time wherever we go. Our children don't cry. No one, of course, drop-kicked a pumpkin into moving traffic at the pumpkin patch. We enjoyed each ride at the fair equally, without a single meltdown. And Christmas morning was one magic moment after another with every present prompting a rapt, joyful expression captured on film. No one bawled at the sight of Santa; no one sang, "No more Santa! No more Santa!"
There is truth in the reality you see in my photo albums -- our family does have a great time together -- but let's just say it's not the whole truth.
I was thinking of this earlier this week as I thumbed through some old family photos that my mom had gathered together for me. Faded and slightly curled on the edges, there's a sense of unposed immediacy that I don't really see in the carefully cropped pictures of my kids. In one photo, my five-year-old head is half cut off and my dad's boots are visible in the bottom right-hand corner. In another I seem to be more interested in my mom's cute hat than the camera. In another I'm sitting in my crib surrounded by toys, some of which I can actually remember loving. Half the pictures have someone's eyes closed, and in one, a thumb obscures the bottom-right of the image but they capture more than smiling faces. They capture moments of a family's life.
There was a time when getting a perfect shot of a child involved a trip to Sears and a half-dozen backdrops. I'm not sure what a 3-year-old is doing alone in a mountain chalet, but I can remember at least one of those shots framed on a wall in my childhood home. The rare beautiful family snapshot was complete luck, unless you were a trained photographer. Without digital cameras, you had no idea what the pictures looked like until you received the developed roll, a standard 24 or 36 shots, and you didn't have to pay for any disasters, like a thumb over the lens.
Billy used to be a complete ham for the camera. There are pictures of lots of pictures of him smiling for the camera in his first year, still quite a few after his first birthday, fewer after he turned two, and after he turned three, it's a real rare, golden moment when it happens, but when it does, it's magic.
We tried to take him to a professional photographer when he was 18 months old, and though she got some great shots, it was a workout for all of us. As his inability to sit still and make strong eye contact got worse, professional photo sessions really became impractical for us. It takes a special person to nurture that brilliant smile into being and not lose their cool when he tries to dismantle the mountain chalet backdrop.
Some photographers won't even work with special needs kids. I recently heard that one mom of an autistic child, frustrated by dealing with photographers, began training herself to become a pro. The special needs community needs her. I doubt it's her goal, but Sears needs her. I nearly got into a fist fight with a Sears photographer who pulled Billy's arm during an aborted session before his third birthday. You don't mess with a pregnant, hormonal woman and her autistic two-year-old ... there's nothing about that which will end well. I will cut you.
Maiming of strangers aside, though, I have learned to manage my expectations where photos of Billy are concerned. On the day of his school picture, I went with him, brought puppets and danced around like an idiot to get that gorgeous smile. The school photographer was awesome and obviously liked kids. He didn't even raise an eyebrow when I got out in front and sang the opening line of Billy's favorite song at the time: "Fly in the buttermilk..." As Billy responded, "Shoo fly, shoo!" I screamed, "GO!!!!" and pointed at the photographer. Startled, he snapped. Success!
When I'm on my own, I've learned to photograph Billy in action, and I don't expect every picture to show him smiling straight into the camera. As the photos from my own childhood have shown me, sometimes the most precious images might be missing an arm ... or a head. Or have a pair of comfortable boots in the corner or a well-loved, raggedy toy center stage. We don't love them less because the photography isn't perfect -- as long as they show us the people we were, the people we are, and the people we love.
Special Needs Children
Tuesday March 02 2010 02:50:40 pm
Connie Welch
Photographing an Autistic Child
Tuesday March 02 2010 04:46:00 pm
JD in TLH
Photographing an Autistic Child
Thursday March 04 2010 12:10:53 pm
Amanda Broadfoot
Photos
Tuesday August 10 2010 10:47:59 am
Lynn
From Amanda on Photos
Tuesday August 10 2010 07:10:13 pm
From Amanda Broadfoot
Smiles
Saturday September 11 2010 04:51:52 pm
Maura
I should know better than to surf at 2:30 am
Monday September 19 2011 06:02:35 am
Anthony
After years alone and an abusive first marriage, I was blessed with my son G, born two days before my 43rd birthday. Absolutely beautiful, with luminous red hair. I had a p&s camera that was advanced for 2004, but which mostly failed when asked to capture him: shutter lag, low ISO = long shutter. I started out wanting a flash, then uphold myself to a DSLR, which won spousal approval when G was about 7 months. Despite ongoing gear problems, I've managed to get some shots of him that justified the $thousands, but those have become less frequent as he's become older (almost 3 now): he's fast and energetic, and increasingly difficult to elicit a smile from. My suspicions were confirmed about six weeks ago with his ASD diagnosis. Had I known a handful of years ago that older dads and math / science types are more likely to sire ASD kids …
But here I am, tears dripping onto my iPhone as I read for the first time of others' experiences with photographers, and the love you have for your kids as I have for mine.
Tomorrow I can post some links if desired. I've actually thought of a side business shooting ASD kids.
Total 7 comments