Illegal immigration began in 1492. Who are we to complain now?
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I just read an article on taking better holiday photos. (At http://www.howtogeek.com/101093/photography-with-htg-10-tips-for-better-christmas-photos/.) Their first directive is not to pose folks. The idea is to take pictures with something natural happening.
That reminded me of Jay's father's holiday photos. He worked for Kodak, and took a lot of pictures, but the man didn't have an artistic bone in his body. Apparently, he had heard about not stiffly posing groups. So he'd take a picture of the mother reading a story to the kids. BUT! Mother would be sitting in a chair looking at an open book on her lap, and the kids and Father would be standing beside each other and her, on either side of her, also looking down at the book.
Nah. Doesn't look posed. Uh uh. Not at all.
There are photos of poor toddler Jay standing next to a tiny sidetable, with his hand on the top of a toy truck on the table, looking miserable. I can just hear his father saying, "Now play with the truck." On an fifteen-inch-wide table?
I doubt it would ever occur to Jay's father to get down on the floor some time when Jay was playing naturally. That way he wasn't controlling the shot. And Jay's father was all about control.
I look at those photos now, and I feel so sorry for the child Jay.
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When I first met Jay, I envied him his childhood, with parents who didn't fight, a father who didn't beat anyone, his whole life in the same school system, and the same house in a beautiful neighborhood, with Grandmother on the next street over.
Then I met his family (his mother had died a few years before). His father was ultra controlling - Jay wasn't even allowed to make any decisions on his own until he married me, his father even wrote all his application essays and cover letters, did all his boy scout projects, nothing Jay could do on his own was ever good enough, his sisters barely remember him as a child, and they weren't that far apart in age, they simply weren't involved, it was all very cold and demanding.
You know, I think I could have handled his death so young (49) if he had at least had a good early life. But he was just beginning to find himself and like himself when he got the diagnosis. That's hard to accept.
I threw all those photos out.
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1 comment:
Because my grandfather was a professional photographer, I have very few casual photos of my family and only one or two of me.
It was silently agreed upon that he took the family photos.
It dawned on me recently that my mother never took photos of me. Ever.
When I was a kid, I was shocked to realize that my Uncle Ray took movies and photos of his kids a lot.
Sigh.
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