Photographing Kids

Liam on the Pig of Good Fortune.


When I take photos of other people’s kids they invariably stop what they’re doing, spin around to face me, and flash a camera smile, one that has nothing to do with anything, and isn’t a happy smile anyway. It’s just a face they’ve been conditioned to make when they see a camera. Who wants to see that? I want to see what they were doing before they noticed the camera.

He doesn’t know how beautiful he is to me. He doesn’t understand why I take so many pictures of him, but he usually doesn’t mind, either, and that’s why I get photos that mean something, not just grinny static snapshots, but little pieces of his soul.

When he does pose for me I wait until he's almost done posing to take the photo. When he's done making the face, the real Liam creeps back.


Phoebe is proving as elusive as a fawn where photography is concerned. I have a tough time catching her off-guard. It's all part of growing up, of half-hour showers and picking out just the right outfit for any situation, no matter how inconsequential; of the self-consciousness that comes from having your body change overnight into something entirely other than what it was.

So I stay back, behind, hoping to find her lost in thought or in something she's doing.

And marvel, because every image tells of the growing.


She waits for the bus, dawn finally painting the sky before she boards. It's been such a long, dark winter, and we'd just gotten a little daylight to enjoy when Daylight Savings Time plunged us back into darkness. It seemed counterintuitive, to call it that, to take it away on the blessed morning end. Finally, the birds are singing when we meet the bus. Just in time for school to end.

She stands under the sentinel pin oak that has weathered so many storms, so many fences, so many snowplows and graders, even had a chicken of the woods fungus poking out of its belly button two years ago. Still it stands, and each morning it watches this young sapling grow.