Thursday 21 February 2013

Our Favourite Family Portrait

Printerpix and Tots100 are running a really great competition at the moment and have asked bloggers to submit their favourite family photograph along with a description of  why that photograph has been chosen.

Like most mums I adore taking pictures of the kids - I have thousands upon thousands.  Luckily in this digital world, it is so easy to keep these precious records of our children growing up.  Sadly I am sure I'm not the only one who has SO many on my computer, and not so many printed out and in frames (bad mummy!).

What's more, I can pretty much bet that I am not the only mum who likes to keep herself out of the picture where at all possible.  I say why ruin a pic by having me in it?  I am trying to make more of an effort though as I really don't want the kids to look back on all their childhood photographs and wonder why I'm not there.  Moreover I don't want them to have the same insecurities with their appearance that I have, and so one of my resolutions this year is to <gulp> have more photographs with me in.

So on a dreary day a few weeks ago, I jollied the troops and suggested a group photograph.  Given the ages of Keani and Dexter (5 and 3) this is not the easiest of tasks.  Both kids more or less used to refuse to smile, these days they're getting better, though both tend to do that classic inane grinning thing that children do when you ask them to 'smile' or 'say cheese'.  It is so difficult to get a decent natural looking pic.

Anyhow with camera in hand, I sat it on the dining room table and aimed it towards the settee where I decided to take the photograph of all of us.  I then had to set it on the self timer thing, then rush back to get into the picture.  Say 'sausages!' I yelled out then subsequently went back to check the picture - and no, it was rubbish!  Again, timer set, I rushed back to my place, 'say chocolate cake!' looked at the picture again, nope, still not great.  And this kind of continued in a similar vein for a while.  We weren't having much success.

The children were getting restless and started jumping around and being silly and I started getting a bit stressed thinking we would never get that perfect family portrait I was after!  And then Dexter started hanging upside down on the settee.  His curly hair cascaded down and his little cheeky grin appeared.

And it was then, I had the Eureka moment!

Needless to say this was the photograph we finally took.  We actually flipped it round, so instead of us hanging upside down, it looks like we're flying!

I adore this pic.  It captures the kid's fun side (and ours too).  It doesn't look staged, it looks really natural, and fun - and actually it was.  It was so nice to be able to take a picture and have some giggles at the same time.



This post is my (Lisa's) entry into the Printerpix Photo competition.

3 comments:

  1. Fab photo that definitely captures a feeling of fun :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you! We love it - we're definitely getting this one framed! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thats such a lovely family photo! Most aren't so happily animated! :)
    Marwa x

    ReplyDelete