Family Portraits

We don't take a lot of pictures as a family. I don't like having my picture taken, for one, which is one reason why you've never actually seen me. I'm usually behind the camera, which I'm fine with. Even my personal Facebook friends will tell you they're disappointed at the lack of photos of me in there. In addition, though, the four of us are rarely all together in the same place, and it's especially rare for there to be another person there who can man the camera.

Recently my mom "requested" a picture of the four of us. Actually it wasn't so much a request, as it was a statement: "I don't have a recent picture of the four of you. The empty frame that I have right now is 5x7. I'll see you on the 17th to exchange gifts." (Yes, I do get my no bullshit attitude from my mother. Thanks, Mom!) This should be a pretty easy gift to give, except for the reasons I stated above, so on Saturday night when Hubs' sister and family came over for dinner, I knew I had to seize on this opportunity.

Okay, so... here's another thing. Child 1 does not like it when the flash from a camera goes off in his face, but it was night so we didn't really have a choice. She took a number of pictures of us, and they all pretty much came out like this:

She would take the picture, and then say "Oops, Child 1's eyes are closed. Let's try again." She said that about five times before we figured out that we should probably prompt him to keep his eyes open. Except with the added prompting, he started anticipating the flash, and not only would his eyes still be closed, his teeth would be gritted in this "I'm smiling, I swear I am!" kind of way.

We went through at least 10 tries that way, with the following script each time:

SIL: Okay, ready?

Me: CHILD 1, KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN!!

Hubs: KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN!!

CLICK

SIL: Oh. Okay, let's try that again.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Eventually I just said "fuck it; good enough" because I was just so tired of sitting there and smiling and yelling and smiling some more. I know Photoshop, I can always take the eyes from one picture and put them over the eyes from another, right?

What we didn't realize, though, is that with all that yelling of "KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN," Child 2 was also apparently making an effort to keep his eyes open, and his smile was turning into the "I'm smiling, I swear I am!!" smile. And so with each picture, his eyes got wider and wider, and his smile got bigger and bigger, so when you look at them next to each other in iPhoto, it's like this:

Ultimately I settled on the least worst of the 20 or so options, with Child 1 kind of squinting and Child 2 just looking slightly out of the ordinary.

Close enough.

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