Feature image: Tim Topple Photography. All rights reserved.
I have a wild child. She's a free spirit, a free thinker, often pants-free, and she never sits still for more than 30 seconds at a time, max. She has long golden curls that hang to just above her bottom but you wouldn't know it if you saw her in action because they are always flowing out horizontal behind her as she runs here, ducks there, or scoots away from me when I try to scoop her up and back into her bedtime routine. I could say part of the reason we don't have as many pictures of her hanging on the walls as we do of her older brother and sister is because she's the third baby, doomed from the start to a lifetime of missed opportunities for the careful chronicling of firsts, lasts, and major milestones. But that's only half of the truth. The other half is this: When she sits quietly for a second or two with her hands in her lap and smiles a gap-toothed, head-cocked smile at me, the result might be a gorgeous photograph, but it's not her. It's not who she is at heart, deep in that space where she's always a little bit on fire and molten and always, always moving. We cleaned out the attic the other day, me and her, and she helped me sort through a box of the kinds of things attics are made for: old pictures and odd mementos, baby clothes I can’t part with, and the rare cast off jeans that might once again fit someday. Stuck to the bottom of the box was a picture of a girl, caught mid-stride in a run, her curls straight out horizontal behind her and her head thrown back, laughing. "Is that me?" She asked, holding it up to the light. It was starting to curl up at the edges and yellowed in a spot at the corner with age. "It's me," I said, and watched her face as she tried to make sense of that. "I knew it," she said, setting the picture down carefully in my hand and bolting suddenly out of the room at full speed for an undetermined destination. "Just who exactly do you think I got it from?" she called back over her shoulder. So how do you capture that? The essence of these small but mighty spirits roaring into the world?***
We asked Tim Topple, whose portrait of his daughter has been shortlisted in Sony’s World Photography Awards for insight.
__ As parents, we want to remember everything. The dimples on the backs of their hands, the T-shirt they wore every other day until they couldn't squeeze into it anymore. But how can you photograph the aspects of their personality that aren't physical? I often focus on the imprints children leave on the things around them and their environment, rather than the children themselves. These things can reveal so much about their personalities; the particular way they left toy animals lined up, the items they deemed worthy of stuffing into one of my pockets before I left for work, other people's reactions to their behaviors, and so on. It’s also good to use your parental instinct – if, say, you took several shots of your child playing or dancing, there may be one that looks perfect, but another that talks to you. It could be something intangible, an expression that to you is just so them, something that radiates their essence. This is the picture I’d choose over the perhaps more visually perfect one. It’s these little pieces of magic that make family photographs special.
Parent Co. partnered with Kickee Pants because we know the most precious memories are fleeting.
Parent Co. partnered with Kickee Pants because we know the most precious memories are fleeting.
As a family law attorney, I know that the families who thrive post-divorce are the ones that make compromises and think creatively about solving problems.
ParentCo.
Author