Ready, Set, Focus!

November 10th.  A warm, sunny fall day in the south.  I am home.  Mack isn't napping.  It's beautiful outside and the leaves are still pretty.  If we hurry, I can get pictures of the kids.  I holler through the house, "Let's go take some pictures while we can!"  Blur through the running upstairs and assessment of what could potentially be deemed as photo shoot worthy and forty-five clothes-slinging, hair-brushing minutes later we pile out the front door and go for "a walk" in our woods.  Naturally Biggun (our seven-year-old loyal and protective half chow, half golden retriever) and his two pestering chocolate lab little brothers without a lick-a-sense between them decide that it is their duty to make sure we don't chase any squirrels without them.  I expect this to be like pretty much every other photo shoot I do.  It shouldn't take long, I tell myself.  I just need one good one for a Christmas card.  Just ONE.  Just one has to turn out.  I feel like this is a reasonable expectation to walk into this session with so I am feeling pretty relaxed.  We find a beautiful spot with nice lighting, I raise my camera with a smile on my face just knowing these are going to be awesome and then all heckfire breaks loose. Click. Dogs barreling. Click, click. Two kids will cooperate but two won't.  I get three rounded up and the fourth goes flying off into the oblivion. She gets chased down, rounded up and is now actually looking in the general vicinity of the camera but someone else is pouting.  Oh, oh... (click, click, click!) everyone is looking and now there is a dog face about two inches from my lens and one trying to knock him out of the way so he can get a good sniff too.  Three happy faces later, we almost have it and then BAM! CLICK! One gets plowed over by dog #3 and leaves the scene in tears while the eldest roars with laughter so two more follow suit. "It's not FUNNY!  That hurt, Erika!" followed by, "It's not funny you got hurt.  It's just the look on your face when you got hit...."   I later hear Erika talking to her Daddy on the phone dying laughing and saying, "Yeah, Mama was all calm and chill and then she just exploded!" followed by copious amounts of laughter.  I do it.  I flip out.  "That is IT!  Get in the car!"  I practice breathing in and out slowly as we drive down the road after I literally sling gravel, of course, because the light is now fading.  For some reason my offspring find this to be hilarious. Five minutes later I slam on the brakes and swerve onto a dirt lane.  Again, the kids find this to be hilarious.  Pretty spot, light is still fairly nice.  I'm still trying to breathe normally.  My kids are still laughing.  "Get out of the car.  Now."  We try for round seventeen.  Two kids will cooperate, one is pouting, and the other has gone flying off into oblivion again.  Round thirty-one. More of the same, just different kids doing it.  Somewhere around try forty-two...oh, oh!...three are looking and are actually really smiling and, wait, Mack is looking too, we might actually have one that works.  Somewhere in the middle of all of this I have stopped fuming and started laughing again.  I go home, call Honey and say,  "If I ever think a photo shoot is hard all I have to do is take them out and remind myself what hard is."  I later discover as I begin to edit them (which I put off for weeks because I dread how bad I just know they're going to be) that even though I lost focus for a minute, my camera never did.  The photos are brilliant.  They will never end up in a magazine or win any awards.  I will never use them for advertising.  The color is kind of flat.  Some are even blurry. But I see in these photos my kids.  I see their personalities and their relationships with each other.  I laugh out loud.  I get choked up.  I think to myself how thankful I am again, that even though I lost focus for a minute, my camera never did.

 

"The Clobbering"