At Central Park with the Glasgows

I always get ner­vous when I am pho­tograph­ing some­one I know or that I am related to.  Even though I know I’m a good pho­tog­ra­pher, I am thrown into an unfa­mil­iar sit­u­a­tion where I have very lit­tle con­trol over the light, the ener­getic chil­dren, the set­ting, etc.  Then there are the expec­ta­tions.  These are peo­ple who know me, who know my work, and have seen the stuff that I’ve shot very delib­er­ately, dur­ing the best light of the day, under the best sorts of con­di­tions.  My expec­ta­tions for myself are very high, and I project these on to them.  For­tu­nately, these are the sorts of sit­u­a­tions I shoot in all the time, so I’m used to it, but they still make me nervous.

So, it was with some trep­i­da­tion and a lot of excite­ment that I accepted when my step­sis­ter Amanda wanted fam­ily pho­tos while they were in town for Easter.  Before every shoot, I try to visu­al­ize what I want it to look like, given that I know where we will be ahead of time.  I think of cer­tain set­tings, cer­tain scenes, cer­tain poses that will work well.  Inevitably, when three year olds are involved, you have to throw all that care­ful plan­ning out the win­dow.  For this shoot, I brought both cam­eras, had them both out and ready to go, and then held on tight for the ride.  I am always look­ing for the moments of real emo­tion, real joy, real laugh­ter, real anger, what­ever.  When you have a three year old who wants to see everything–the cranes, the piles of wood, the machines, the bridge, the park.… you have to let things unfold and catch the moments when you can.  If you try to exert your­self on the sit­u­a­tion in any really overt way, you are des­tined for phony look­ing pho­tos.  And I don’t want no phony photos.

Amanda, Andrew, and Jacob were a lot of fun to shoot.  Kids have a lot of energy… a LOT of energy… it’s fun to watch their curios­ity and their exu­ber­ance, to watch as they dis­cover new things and try to describe things that are unfa­mil­iar to them.  Durham’s Cen­tral Park proved to be a great place for fam­ily pho­tos, even with the numer­ous dis­trac­tions.  It was a beau­ti­ful morn­ing, and there were lots of visu­ally inter­est­ing things to put behind them and lots of things to keep Jacob’s atten­tion, how­ever fleeting.

I don’t usu­ally men­tion the tech­ni­cal things on this site, but I will say that a fast, pro-level cam­era really makes shoots like this eas­ier and smoother.  Hav­ing a rapid-fire shut­ter and tele­pathic aut­o­fo­cus really help cap­ture some of those fleet­ing moments before a smile turns into a frown, or a laugh into a scowl.  Try also to remem­ber that even though you are shoot­ing a whole fam­ily, that you are pre­sent­ing the pho­tos as a set, and that you can iso­late moments and inter­ac­tions between fam­ily members–they don’t all need to be in every shot.  Hanna and I have a col­lage of shots (by the beau­ti­ful and tal­ented Rachel Gar­ri­son) of var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions of Isaac and us that as a whole, expresses our family.

So thanks to the Glas­gows for a fun morning–I hope they enjoy the pho­tos, and even­tu­ally we’ll get up to Brook­lyn for a shoot.