including myself in the frame

I am my family's documentarian. I have always felt drawn to capturing moments in time, but becoming a mother really kicked that desire into high gear. I love creating something beautiful (at least to my eyes), and I love capturing my children as they grow, and over these past 7 years I have been able to merge these two things together and it's been pretty wonderful in many ways.

It also means that since I am behind the camera 99% of the time, I am often left out of the photos. Over the years I've tried to find ways to include myself in the picture (literally and figuratively, see what I did there?), using mirrors, timers, or just holding the camera at arm's length for a selfie-before-it-was-called-that. I have a series of "mommy and me" shots with each of the boys that I started with them as babies and has been made much easier since the advent of front-facing cameras on smartphones (one day I will compile these photos into a photo book). When I was 8 months pregnant with Donovan I attempted a "diy maternity photoshoot" which was kinda fun. I even at one point had a wired remote for my camera that I experimented with some, but even then the wire is only so long so you're kinda limited on what you can do with it.

As it turns out, my current dslr has built-in wifi, which can connect to a Canon app on my phone which makes wireless remote shooting really, really easy and awesome. I'm kinda kicking myself for not having become familiar with this system before now. I've been playing around with it the past few days and am pretty excited by the whole new world of opportunities this opens up. I want to try out a self-portrait project, as something totally different and also because my kids aren't very cooperative models these days anyway (Quinn actually yells "Stop taking pictures!!" at me if he catches me holding a camera near him). I'm REALLY excited about this whole new (and stealthy) way to capture the moments of our days, with me and the boys together. Today I set up my camera in corners of the room and captured us doing things like just watching a movie and reading bedtime stories.

I am also realizing that I should buck up and get myself a proper tripod. I have a gorillapod that works ok, we have enough different-height furniture around that I can set it up in a more-or-less desireable height where needed, but yeah. I don't know why I've held out this long.

These are some of the very first pictures I took after figuring out I could do this (also, before I remembered how to set the timer on my camera so I could press the button and have time to hide my phone away), and they're not the best but I also just really like them anyway. Partially because yeah, they capture a lot about our lives right now anyway (me sitting on the floor looking at my phone? Quinn on my lap? Yeah).

I feel excited and re-energized by all the potential here, and it's a really fun place to be particularly since I've felt kinda creatively low for a while.It feels good to feel inspired.