Something I think is important to capture as a photographer is the daily stuff that doesn't
really feel like it might be good enough to make the cut. You know the stuff I mean, right? The things you do daily or weekly and even though you enjoy them, it's not something you necessarily feel like you should have pictures of. I mean, it's not that once a year Halloween costume shot or that Christmas tree hunting picture, it's just ordinary, daily life. But to me, those are the gems - kind of like the things that make a house a home. It's the ordinary, daily things that make a family.
So, when I recently posted the question of doing something a little different for a blog post, and my husband's Aunt Sandy said she wanted a Behind the Scenes shot, THIS day and time was perfect. You see, this, was my "canvas".
It was a normal weekday and my daughter wanted to play with Play-Doh. This is something we have done a hundred times, and always at our kitchen table, with our place mat that is stuck to the table. I was checking e-mail and had just finished breakfast, so my laptop and drink were both on the table. What I think is important to understand is that I feel like pictures are beautiful because they are real life and they tell a story. To me, documenting this everyday moment that we enjoy regularly was so important - plus, it gave me a great opportunity to get a pull back of the behind the scenes before I shot.
Quite literally, the only things I changed were my lighting (I needed some!) and I got a few things out of the frame that didn't really pertain to the story (my laptop and drink). I also found the plastic bag to be a large item that I didn't want, but I could have easily left it in and it could have been part of the story.
That's it! I used the same camera and lens for all the shots you see in this post. I just let her play and I rotated around her, changing my angles, and kept distracting things (like the basket on the counter) out of the frame- and since I tend to shoot "tight" (up close), that isn't too hard. The rest of the story wrote itself and I used my knowledge of photography to help tell the story I was both seeing and wanted to tell.
I included details that were a part of the things I want to remember of this time. Her little fingers on the rolling pin; the way she pressed soooo hard on the cookie cutters; her excitement when she had a new creation; that HAIR. ;-)
I like to show her faces, as that is a part of the story in both who she is and who she is becoming. And even this process here, of her putting pieces in the little pot. She had decided she was done as I was trying to get a shot of her collection and was ripping up each one and putting them inside the flower toy. It was a great reminder to me that she is still very much in control of her story and I love to embrace that. And bonus, she loves dressing up like a princess. Thanks to Grandma, she now has a few play dresses that we get to see regularly and one was captured here - a great memory I will treasure.
To cap off the story, picking up Play-Doh is just about as fun as playing - using a chunk to go around and gather all the little pieces that fell off - that's something I want to hold on to as my daughter grows. And as it turned out, that bag ended up being a part of the story after all, as it is what we keep our Play-Doh toys in.
Ok, I hope this was something a little different and was a little bit of an insight into my shooting. I really do just document our story with photographs. There's no special lights or studio, just our home, camera, and me. And if you ever wondered what it might look like to have me document something like this in your life, stay tuned. While I can't give you any specific time line, I CAN tell you that the photography you see with my family, is what I will be providing for other families as well, in the not too distant future.
