Family Photos

I was once given a piece of interior design advice that I will never take:

"Don't put pictures of your family or kids in public spaces in your home. Bedrooms and hallways are for family pictures. Artwork should be displayed in public areas. Who cares about your kids on vacation anyway?"

Who cares about my kids? WELL, Miss Designer Lady, if someone doesn't care about my kids, then I don't want them in my home to see my lack of real artwork. So there.

As soon as I heard this advice, I hightailed it out of the design store and decided they could never have my business (not that I had the budget . . . . and quite honestly their stuff was too "stuffy" for me anyway).

I love candid shots of kids. Studio pictures, while maybe important for certain milestones (maybe?), rarely capture the personality and emotion that make children so amazing.

I am a novice photographer at best. I have a camera with a million functions. I have no idea how to really use it. I just experiment. Anyway, I digress . . . .

Here are some of my favorite kid photos-----to me, these beat the real art that I should have by leaps and bounds.

The first shot of Leah was at the Eiffel Tower (you don't know how many people have asked me if that's a backdrop!) when she was 9 mos old. It is poster-sized (20x30"). One day I was thinking about what I'd take if there was a fire. This picture and my Kaffe Fassett quilt were my initial thoughts.

The second picture is a little trio I had done when Esther was super little. I realized I needed some pictures of her in the house; enter costco.com. I decided to experiment with their "effects" with digital pictures. I love how these turned out. I used to think they were kind of freaky-cool. Now I just think they're cool. They totally look like charcoal drawings.

Third pic is two poster-sized girls.

Fourth picture is Esther at the Golden Gate Bridge. We almost thought it was worth it to go to Paris to recreate the Leah shot, but time, money, and 2 little kids on an airplane for 12 hours made us do otherwise. So our landmark was GGB. You can't see it terribly well, because I sacrificed the bridge for the dahlias and the amazing look of wonder on Esther's face.

I wish I could invite that designer lady over and have her look around my house. Yes, there are a couple original artworks (which I love) but nothing can ever surpass the happiness I get when I look at my girls.

Apologies for the darkness and grainy-ness. I couldn't get my lighting to cooperate. And I don't have time to wait for the perfect moment. I think you get the picture.