Picture Perfect

When Nathan was born, we lived in a very small rental house.  Now, my husband is bit of a collector of stuff, so our tiny house was crammed to the gills with clutter.  

The clutter made taking pictures of our new baby somewhat difficult.  I didn't want to share baby pictures that featured embarrassing piles of clutter in the background.  I guess I could have Photoshopped some of the clutter out before sharing the photos, if my Photoshop skills weren't limited to the "auto contrast" and "crop" functions. 

But one day at the mall, I discovered a place that would meet my need for cute baby photos with a clutter-free background.  I was nursing my three-month-old (fully covered up!) in front of The Picture People portrait studio, so I had a lot of time to stare at their adorable sample portraits in the store window.  I could have cute pictures of Nathan, I thought, and I'd have the perfect gift for Father's Day!

Once Nathan latched off, I went over to Picture People and inquired about their availability.  Somebody had just been a no-show, so they had an opening.  I raced over to Baby Gap across the way and bought Nathan a cute casual outfit. 

They took some of the most adorable shots I'd ever seen.  At the end of the day I walked out with $200 worth of portraits and some great Father's Day gifts. 

At that point I was hooked.  I took Nathan back to have more portraits taken when he was six months old.  I missed his one-year portraits because of, you know, that whole depression thing, but I took him to take portraits when he was 15 months old.

We went back about a year later, to get Mother's Day and Father's Day gifts, but this became a portrait session that would live in infamy.  See, it's really hard to pick which poses you want to buy, and so I just picked them all and ended up spending $750 on portraits that day.  What?!  I got 10 gifts out of that, plus a bunch of cute stuff that still hangs in our living room! 

(The lesson I did learn, though, was that it would have been smarter to purchase the photo CD for $250, thus granting us the rights to the photos and therefore the ability to print as many as we wanted.  The fact that we didn't have a good photo printer didn't matter; we could have bought one and still come out ahead.) 

So, after that session, Bill put the kibosh on professional portraiture. 

And our photo needs were met by Nathan's school photos, which seriously look a lot more professional than any school photos I ever appeared in. 

But with Father's Day approaching, I wanted some new portraits to give out as gifts. 

So, a couple of weeks ago, Nathan and I trudged out to Picture People again.  I hadn't really planned for this session in advance, so on the way we got his hair cut and bought some clothes. 

He freaked out a little bit at the photo session.  He just didn't want to smile.  We had to take a break and leave the store to have a little talk.  All he was interested in was going behind the backdrop screen to find all the toys they use as props.  We took a few shots with a plastic guitar, some with him riding a fire engine that was too small for him, and the standard ones where he's holding the number 4. 

None of those made the final cut.  In fact, I struggled to choose because the package I was getting with my coupon included one large framed picture, and I couldn't find a shot that just screamed "hang me up in your living room."  I finally settled on this one:

You can't see his teeth, but that's okay because at least this doesn't feature his cheesy picture smile.

But I couldn't resist ordering some prints of this one, too:

He frequently talks about Mad Nathan, an alter ego who lives inside of him and fights to come out sometimes.  Now we have a portrait of Mad Nathan. 

It's really kind of perfect because the boy spends about half his time happy and half his time griping about things, so now we have living room portraits that reflect that ratio.