I don’t care. This is also one of my personal all-time favorite family photos. It’s my son, Chaz, and my mother in her apartment in Fargo, North Dakota. Chaz took a weekend out of his busy life to spend some quality time alone with her. This is not the first time he has done this; he loves my mother and he loves Fargo.
The photo was taken by my brother, Joel, with his less than smart phone. Joel has not upgraded his “camera equipment” in several years; it’s the only camera he owns. I would be happy to comp him one of my Nick Kelsh Photo Courses and scrounge around in my photographic scrapheap to come up with a decent camera but he’s not interested. The fact that this photo is a complete violation of Photo Tip #97A—Don’t Let Direct Sunlight Hit Your Lens—doesn’t begin to phase him.
But Joel did hit the ball out of the park with this one. Here are two people I love dearly, together doing something they both treasure—reading. I think it’s no coincidence that Chaz, now enrolled at the Harvard Law School, loves to read because my mother, who never attended college, loves to read. Somehow it trickled down. I just love that Joel probably unknowingly … oh who am I kidding … TOTALLY unknowingly, focused on a little detail of the relationship between Chaz and his grandmother, just like I told you all to do in this photo tip about telling the story with details.
Sunday is Mother’s Day. There are a bunch of mothers in this country who rarely get photographed with their kids because they are on the wrong side of the camera. Maybe we can do something about that. And don’t forget the grandmothers. Just look at these great results we got when we asked our fans to submit photos of what makes grandparents so special.
I’m posting this picture to remind you photographically inadequate fathers that it doesn’t take all that much to succeed at family photography. You simply need to be willing to pick up a photographically inadequate camera and document those little moments of mom and the kids—or grandmom—that ring true. When they are together and preoccupied grab the smartphone if that’s all you have and push the button.
(I would recommend avoiding direct sunlight on your lens. It can result in distracting streaks of “flare” in your pictures. Whatever.)
