Friday, October 12, 2012

Mom in the picture

Have you read the article, The Mom stays in the Picture  from the Huffington post?  If you haven’t, click here and read.  You'll love it. 

I love it.  Love how she so perfectly put into words some feelings I have about photographing moms with their kids and how important it is. 

I’ve tried to get over how lame I feel when I hand someone else the camera and ask them to take some pictures of me with my kids.  I want my kids to see me with them, see me laughing and smiling, sitting in the sun.  I want my motherhood captured.  I want to stop looking at my flaws in the pictures and start looking at the love and happiness that’s the subtext, the background for these photos.  When my kids are grown and I’m truly old and they are doing what I’m doing now I want them to see me doing it.  Being there, in the moment.  But I also want to take pictures with my children because it gives me a vision of the life I’m trying to lead, the mom I’m trying to be.  It helps me to see the big picture of what I’m trying to accomplish. 

As a photographer I always insist on taking pictures of moms with their children.  The moms are always the ones behind the camera.  Sometimes the moms protest, but I push it.  As I edit the photos I’m overcome by the love that spills out of the images.  I find them stunning and am always surprised  when I view them with a client and they cringe.  We moms have such a hard time looking past what we don’t like about ourselves in pictures.  Why do we do that to ourselves?  I love what she says in that article, our kids don’t see our love handles or the double chins or the big noses.  They just see the love. How silly it is to shy away from capturing our motherhood because we aren’t presented perfect in the pictures.  When we look beyond that we see so much beauty and it helps us reframe our lives.  

I wrote about my feelings on this in depth back here.  This snapshot of Charlie and me really changed the way I view my motherhood.  Photographs are powerful.  I love them.image

So, while we were at the hunting lodge with Noah and Kristi that perfectly lush day I asked Kristi to snap some photos of me with the kids.  Once I get past my insecurities about how I look I love what I see.  Love. Joy.  Happiness.  Delighting in a moment together. 

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I was there.  We lived that moment together.  We were all smiling and laughing.  I know I’ll want to hop back into those pictures one day when it’s all over.  And I know that feeling will ache inside me, but at the same time I know it will fill me with joy.  Joy that I lived that moment once, long ago.

4 comments:

  1. sayd. seriously. you're the best. and the prettiest. i think you look hot!! love you. miss you.

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  2. The kids are adorable but you look ravishingly motherly! Just love the light that captures feelings as well as colors!

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  3. I love this post. I'm guilty of always taking the pictures...gladly. This made me want to hop in more often.

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  4. Saydi, I happened upon your blog via Power of Moms to Saren's blog to yours. I'm not one to ever leave comments, but I just have to. I met you ions ago in D.C. at some singles prom when I was only 18, I think. I was headed to Study Abroad in Jerusalem and you had returned shortly before, I think. You gave me some great, personalized advice on things to look for, (like some swing in East Jeru complete with a map you wrote out on a napkin, which we spent hours trying to find. It made for a great adventure!). Anyway, ever since then I've been one of your fans. I've listened to you and your sisters' podcasts, etc. I just happened to stumble upon this post you wrote about moms refusing to be photographed. It hit a chord with me and I started weeping over the laptop. I think it was meant to be that I read this. You made such great points. I sometimes think that if I die while my kids are young, will they have any idea that I was around creating all these memories with them? Well, thank you for your words. I think you've given me enough reason to step out from behind the camera. Muchisimas gracias! Brenley

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