The Many Faces of Huckleberry

My baby boy starts middle school in two weeks.  

Too soon if you ask me.

 Tonight is his middle school orientation.  He is not nervous at all.

 And why should he be?

 He is sweet.

 He is smart.

 He is funny.

He is cheerful.

Now you see why all the shots are close-ups.

He is looking forward to this new adventure.  

He already found two kids in our church that will be attending the new school.

He made friends at his summer camp~though he doesn't remember their names.

So why am I worried?  Maybe not exactly worried.  More sad.  Because my baby boy is growing up.

And he is growing up into a fantastic young man, even if he does say "isn't that enough pictures?" fairly often.

 

Easter Photos

If you spend 45 minutes outside trying to get that perfect Easter picture, it might not happen.  But if you can let go of perfection, you can enjoy yourself and you might even learn a lot.

You might learn that kids won't open their eyes if it is too bright out...

but they'll look adorable anyway.
 
If you didn't already know this, you will learn that children love jumping...

But they can look pretty silly doing it:

If you delete all the imperfections, you might not remember later...

That 95% of the pictures you take of Sunflower show the side or back of her head as she moves away from you.

If you only keep one shot of three kids jumping, you may not remember how hard it was to capture all three children in the air at once...

And that is just barely.

If you wait too long to look at your photos, you may not realize until too late that your child ate a bit of a flower...

Yes, your 7 year old.  Either not poisonous or not actually ingested.

If you throw away all the photos that have a bad focus...

You might not see how long your son's hair is getting- but look at those sharp trees!

If you intend to not cut off the feet as is apparently better composition...

You should probably pay closer attention to the length of your sons' pants and buy them new shoes.

If you delete all of the pictures where they are goofing off...

You may not remember how long SnapDragon pretended to sleep and all the ways Huckleberry tried to wake him up.

If you want to show the photo where you finally got the exposure right when you've been shooting manual for only 5 weeks...

You better not be embarrassed to see your son* in a pink hat.  (He is covering Sunflower's head because she complained that she was cold without her hat.  He's a problem solver, my son!)

If you go outside to get that perfect shot...

You probably won't get it (if you are me).  But you'll get a lot of memories worth keeping and maybe, just maybe, something that captures your kids' personalities.

 * since Dad wore the hat after church Sunday so we wouldn't lose it, it is safe to say that a 7 year old boy wearing it won't cause us too much shame.

Also linking with Watchful Wednesday at Flower Photography.  The theme is emotion.  These photos evoke a lot of different emotions in me, but the primary one is joy (after getting past the frustration that not one of 657 pictures turned out perfect).