Actually, it’s more than a problem; it’s a crisis. When Huffington Post blogger Allison Tate wrote a piece called “The Mom Stays in the Picture”, millions of women jumped on the band wagon. We recently put out an all-points-bulletin on our Facebook page requesting that moms post recent pictures of them with their kids. We received a photograph from a woman with five relatively old children who said it was the first photograph ever taken of her with all of her kids. One mother came up with the most recent photograph of her with her family. It was taken in 2006. Comments attached to these photographs said that tears were flowing down their faces as they considered the empty spaces in the memory books.
The obvious solution is that the man in the house steps up to the plate and, well, be a man. Dads, it will take so little to make the mother in your life happy. You get to use her camera. She will make sure the settings are right (and if not, read my handy guide for taking photos with someone else’s camera). All you need to do is play one less game of Angry Birds a week and you may completely change how generations of your family view your wife, your children, and you.
But it’s a little simplistic to say women aren’t in photographs because they’re taking all the photographs. There are lots of undercurrents of personal image—she thinks she’s too fat, she thinks her clothes aren’t right, she’s not wearing makeup, her hair isn’t washed, she doesn’t like her smile or her profile, she thinks she’s too fat— I mentioned that one twice on purpose, by the way.
She might even feel guilty asking you to take over the duties. She probably thinks you don’t like it. She might get frustrated by your lack of sensitivity to composition and lighting. She may be trying to avoid a little marital conflict. (Trust me, I’ve been there.)
Most women say, more than anything else, for Mother’s Day they want quality family time. Photograph the mother in your life this year for Mother’s Day. Keep the camera handy all day long. And if you wanted to completely blow the mind of the mother in your life for Mother’s Day, promise to photograph her with the kids on the first weekend of every month for one year. A couple of things are going to happen.
Regardless of how bad your photography is she will love and treasure your efforts—there is no doubt about that. I’m tempted to say that this is not even about producing good photographs. It’s the act of love associated with the attempt. So don’t get all anxious about not being a good photographer. People who are not good photographers have been producing family treasures with cameras for over 100 years.
Something else you should know. We asked our almost all-female page audience what kind of pictures they would like to have taken of them with their kids. Not surprisingly, many of them said they would just like simple every day real moments documented spontaneously. How hard can that be? There’s no set up. There’s no making sure everybody gets their hair fixed or changing clothes for the photo shoot. Nobody has to look in the camera and smile. You, dad, just need to be willing to push the button every now and then when mom starts doing whatever it is moms do with the kids.
And they do a lot. They make lunches with kids and they play the piano with kids and they look at insects with magnifying glasses together and they hug at school sporting events and they check their kids’ heads for lice and they wrestle with them and they tickle their kids and they help their kids find the Easter basket and they go out to fancy restaurants with them and they help them fill water balloons and they go for walks in the park and they look at report cards together and … you get the idea.
Your wife is probably the camera owner/operator in your family; she is in most families. She could pretty much teach you how to put that camera on automatic focus and automatic exposure and have you ready to go for those incredible candid moments in the time it takes to make a sandwich. It may, however, require you to keep your mouth closed and admit that she’s better at something than you are. That may be difficult for those of you that had fathers who wore the photographic pants in the family.
I wrote an article about how to pose mom with the kids on Mother’s Day as a gift idea. I stand by everything I wrote then but now we’re ready to move on a little bit. If there’s a decent camera in your home and you love your wife and you know how lucky your kids are to have her as a mother, you owe it to all of them to pick it up and push the button every once in a while. And wait till you shoot a picture that everyone loves! You’ll be back.
Your cause is our cause. Those of us at How to Photograph Your Life are going to help people like you help yourselves. This is not going to happen over night.
But it’s just not right. This can’t be allowed to continue. All you dads out there can ease a lot of pain in a very short amount of time. You could start this Sunday.
Wow this is so true! My son is 3 months old and I have tons of photos of him and dad and hardly any of me/us