the value of imperfect photographs

so today . . . i was reading diandra's most recent photography blog. she takes beautiful photographs, and i always enjoy looking at her latest entry. but today, it was the story she told that caught my attention (although, the photos are certainly worth looking at!)

diandra is the most photogenic person i know. in all the thousands of photos we have taken of her, i'll bet there aren't 10 photos that could be called bad. unlike her mother. or grandmother. my mom and i do not photograph well. i don't know why. i think my mom is beautiful, especially when she laughs, but whenever we try to take her picture something happens to her face. it's like her face doesn't want it's picture taken.

and then there is my face--it doesn't like to be photographed either. the biggest problem is my bangs. i don't know why, but they never seem to lay properly when i am having my picture taken. in fact, it is pretty much a family joke now--"how are my bangs?" i will ask before the shutter is pressed. and whoever is with me will attempt to fluff them or arrange them, but they are never right . . . that is why a good picture of my mom and me is priceless!

but diandra always looks beautiful! except in her third grade school picture. she had shoulder length hair, which we had curled under for "picture day," but for some reason by the time the photo was snapped her hair looked longer on one side than on the other. and she had a cold sore on her lip--on picture day!! while she valiantly gave her best smile, you can see that she is not feeling it--i probably made her wear something she didn't want to wear or the photographer said something about her hair . . .

photographs are important. they capture a moment in time that we will never again experience. but we can revisit it through the pictures that are taken. i love photographs--even the imperfect ones, because they tell a story. sometimes the imperfect ones tell the story the best.

i took this picture a couple of years ago when we were visiting my parents. diandra, mom, and i spent the day at the portland zoo. we had a great time and took a ton of pictures. at one point i was trying to get a good picture of mom and diandra in front of these pretty bushes. so of course, since my mom was in the picture, i had to take several, because you never know how she is going to look when the camera actually clicks. this picture captures the moment during that series, when diandra thought she heard a snake in the bushes.
do you see the look on her face? this might be one of those 10 bad pictures of her . . .

but in the interest of fairness (and because i love my mom) here is a much better picture of her that diandra took earlier in the day--i'm pretty sure there were no snakes in the immediate vicinity . . .in her blog, diandra commented about how the horrible school picture resides on the wall right along with all the others. well, pictures document our history, and it isn't always pretty. if i only kept the vacation photos where i look good, we would have very few vacation photos.

this picture was taken in mazatlan last summer. we were walking down the street and saw these two huge shells, and rollie said, "if you sit there, those shells will look like angel wings." so i did. but look at my bangs!! and my bag sitting by the angel wing shells! i look at this picture, and my first thought is "delete!" but when i look at this imperfect image, i remember a perfect day! so i saved the photo, even though i wish i could photoshop some bangs across my bare forehead (it was a very windy day!)
here is my favorite school picture of diandra. it is her kindergarten picture, and it think it is adorable!so in defense of school pictures, i think it is pretty good if you can say that only one out of thirteen pictures is bad. but then again, when your subject is this cute, it isn't that hard . . .