This Moment

I have several thoughts about this photo. It’s certainly not the best from a technical standpoint, but it does happen to hit on a few of the things that have been rolling around in my head.

We have most definitely entered the blurry toddler years. A lot of photos of Simon are out of focus these days, and only part of that can be blamed on my lacking photography skills. He is on the move. I find myself wanting to have the video camera at the ready because still photos don’t always do justice to a subject that is so rarely still. This photo is a perfect example of me grabbing my camera and hoping that the settings are already right—or at least close enough that the photo can be saved with the adjustments that can be made in iPhoto.

Simon is playing with an old film camera of mine. It’s one of several cameras we have given him to play with—they all work, or would if we could find film for them. This one is particularly satisfying, I think, because even though it has no film, it automatically winds after every shot and he likes the mechanical noise. It makes me a little sad to think that all our film cameras have become toys. I don’t necessarily miss shooting with film, and I have no plans to go back to it at all, but I do sometimes tend to romanticize the physical part of photography—and the delayed gratification—that we’ve all but lost with digital cameras. I remember the thrill of taking a roll of film to be developed and the anticipation of wondering whether or not your shots would turn out the way you hoped. I also remember the disappointment when they didn’t. I was looking through an old photo album at Jason’s folks’ this weekend and thinking how often he had a dopey look on his (admittedly adorable) face. We all did in our childhood photos—that’s the thing about having just one shot. Nobody took seventeen exposures at a time just to make sure you had two or three “good” ones to pick from.

I love watching Simon play; it’s a wonderful mix of imitation and doing it his own way. In this photo (and you can see it a little better in this one) I love that he has the strap around his neck, all properlike, and I especially adore the somewhat awkward grip he has on the too-big camera. He doesn’t seem to care if the camera is right-side-out or backwards when he’s taking the picture, but he always looks at the back to make sure it comes out right (just like we do with the digital camera).

It pleases me to think that he is learning to like some of the same things that we do. This was the conversation he and Jason had last night, in fact:

    “Simon, I like watching Avatar [the anime series, not the sci-fi movie] with you. I think it bodes well for our movie-watching future together. When you get a little older, we’ll watch Star Wars.”
    “Dah [yes]! And Choo Choo [Thomas]!”
    “Yep, and we’ll watch Totoro.”
    “Dah! And Buzz [Toy Story]!”

I like it how we just fit together as a family. I know that it probably seems obvious that a two-year-old would like the things we teach him to like—what else does he know? Nonetheless, I am amazed at how it unfolds.