Going Home Part 2

Third Day:  Since we all live in separate parts of the country now and we rarely get to celebrate any holiday all together, our family's tradition is to celebrate whatever holiday happens to be nearby. This visit, we're dying Easter eggs, even though Easter was a few weeks ago. It's a fun activity for my mother and my niece on a rainy afternoon. Later we make a field trip to the garden supply store, where Bella has been promised some playtime on their model swing-set. Unfortunately, the swing-set has been elevated out of reach. Bella rolls with it and joins her father selecting plants and herbs for their garden. She likes activities she can do with the grown-ups help, like playing guitar. In my shooting, I'm still giving the family group space so I can fill each frame, and I'm looking for light to illuminate Bella's little hands compared with my mother's or brother's hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fourth Day:  Today was Aaron's Christening, and I think I would have found the ceremony easier to shoot if he wasn't my nephew. I had an assignment for IPC Visual Lab, but on top of that, I had whatever Aaron's grandmothers assigned to me, too: Get the photo of the priest baptizing Aaron with the water, get the photo of your brother and the baby in their suits, get the photo of the baby with both the grandmothers, come take this picture, come take that picture. 

 

 

 

It was easier to give in than to approach shooting like another assignment. The one picture I had especially wanted to take was one of my brother and his godfather holding a picture from my brother's Baptism. The album holding that old picture also had my brother's godfather's favorite picture of my father -- he's standing between my mother and my brother's godmother, and they're laughing because for some reason my father is grinning with a cherry tomato in his mouth. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No one remembers the joke, but the tomato still elicited more laughter and interest than the sideburns my brother's godfather was sporting in the other picture. With all the directions being given to me, I wish I had been better about directing the people holding those photos. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That really was the challenge of the weekend, how to frame the documentary images I intended to make while trying or being directed to try to take "nice pictures" of the family.