That Poor Cobbler's Son...

I'm sure you've heard the saying: "The cobbler's son has no shoes". My girls can totally relate. I spend so much time working on my art, and studying for school that I forget to take a moment to compose some images of my own children. Don't get me wrong, I do carry a camera with me every where we go. It's usually my iPhone, or an iPad. These are great for snapshots, and capturing wonderful moments of curiosity, but they are definitely not the images that I should be taking every year that define the major (and minor) changes in my children's lives.

I would combine my studies with photo shoots of my kids, but I usually do my homework assignments when the girls are in bed. This allows me to focus completely on my studies, and not worry about two adorably curious, high energy children who want to "help" during the shoot.

Add to that personal preference the fact that many of my instructors have explicit instructions to move beyond household members and family members for our assignments. This helps me to learn the physical topography of many faces, and allows for me to practice working with those different face shapes, skin colors, insecurities, and preferences.

Each person has a different shaped nose, or different eyes; and they definitely have different insecurities that they would like to keep secret and not have highlighted in their family portrait. How would I learn to be sensitive to these things when I spend my time becoming an expert on the topography and emotional requests of the same two children? I can't! So I work very hard to find a variety of models to shoot, and I look past my own children while doing it.

But I shouldn't always overlook my children, I know. They deserve to have lap time with me at my computer as I edit their own photo shoot. They should look upon a wall and see their picture on it and remember when it was shot. They should have some time to be the center of attention, with mama's camera in hand and them in the spotlight. So my final project for my Portraiture I class focused on my older daughter: Samantha Jadyn.

The project demanded four images of one person. The shots start with tight framing and move out to show more of the scene. I was free to move scenes as I pleased, and I was encouraged to move my lights so that each image was able to stand on it's own volition while at the same time worked together as a group. Here are the shots that made my final project:

Here is her headshot. A far cry from typical school pictures, I love how relaxed and confident she was in front of the camera. 

We homeschool, and the classroom was a fantastic setting for the "sitting portrait". She is actually doing school work for this shot. Parents who send their children to a traditional school have images of their child's classroom... why shouldn't I?

A fantastic benefit of homeschooling is that we don't have to sit at the desk for every subject. In fact, cuddling under a snuggly blanket on the couch is SJ's favorite place for reading. I can't say I blame her!

Recess time! She gets to choose between jumping on the trampoline, running a mile, playing with her toys, watching tv for 20 minutes, or playing on her iPad for 20 minutes during recess. Today she played with her new Lincoln Logs. In any given week, she does each of the above mentioned activities during recess, but I love that she is sitting on the floor with her back to the HD flat screen television and playing with toys that require no batteries. 

After doing this shoot, I have decided that I will schedule shoots with each of my children just like I used to do before I started studying photography. The bonding we did during the shoot was enough to make me want to do this every month. But the look on her face when I told her that she was my model was enough to make me realize how badly she has wanted to model for me, but just hasn't said anything.

I'm going to go wash this guilt off of me, and check out my calendar for the 3 year old's shoot.