Photo Shoots

We tease my mom mercilessly over her poses as a photographer, but she is hands down the best person I know when it comes to archiving memories as pictures.  She not only remembers (more often than not) to take pictures at events and occasions, she faithfully prints them, writes the location, date, and participants on the back and then organizes them in photo albums or photo boxes.  You would think with such a great role model I would be so good at this, but frankly I am the worst!

I almost never take my camera any where, and even though my phone has a camera, I hate asking people (even if it's just J.T.) to break away from the action to get a picture.  There is also the fact that I do not like getting my own picture taken that gets in the way.  In regard to printing, writing on the back and organizing, I was decent at this in high school and college, but since graduating forget it.

This weakness would not be terribly problematic if it wasn't for the fact that we have to create a profile book and webpage that highlights in words and pictures our life together.  It is also strongly recommended that most of these pictures be action rather than posed shots-yikes!

As a result, we spent all day yesterday having a "photo shoot" with my brother and mother-in-law.  With careful planning, we were able to recreate all of the things we like to do--playing games, playing with the puppies, cooking, etc. and have them look like they were authentically happening (we hope!).

I hope it doesn't sound like we are trying to be misleading, as we actually do or have done everything we had photographed, but due to our lousy photography skills (and the fact that they recommend no sunglasses or booze in any of the pictures) we had to improvise.

Thanks to my mother-in-law's skills, we ended up with a lot of usable shots and had fun in the process.  All in all it was a win, but also a firm kick in the pants to do a better job of taking pictures in the future!