I love my kid’s smiles. LOVE.
I have a picture of my daughter on her first day of school looking up at my husband with the most genuine, loving smile. It is definitely one of my favorites. But that image didn’t come from saying “cheese”– and a genuine smile never will. Those smiles aren’t willingly flashed at the camera on command. If I want one of those precious expressions while I’m holding a camera I have to work for it.
I have to let them be them. We have to run, jump, and be silly. I let them take the lead, we play, we joke, we have fun…until it’s not about the camera, it’s about being in the moment. Then the camera disappears and they flash a smile. I got what I wanted. But I also got more. I don’t need a hundred pictures of it. Just one…and that one goes in a frame.
But all of those others–they tell the story. The story of them.
This guy is constantly trying to make everyone around him laugh. He is a crazy, loud, goofy, dramatic ball of energy. And I love him.
I let him be himself and didn’t ask him to smile at the camera.
They don’t smile at the camera, they smile at the person behind the camera.
