I just started taking this wonderful course through Click & Company (formerly Clickin’ Moms) called Capturing Joy with Lisa Tichané, an amazing children’s photographer from the south of France. We are learning various tips and tricks to photographing in a really joyful way – both in inciting it from our subjects and in elements of photography that give a strong joyful feel to your imagery. We are just a week into the course and there’s already something that’s sticking right into the core of my bones.

I’m a daily shooter who carries her camera everywhere. I’ve tried only having it occasionally, and it just isn’t what works for me. My son is very used to me having my lens in his face. Very used to it. We had an early childhood class photo taken not long ago, and it’s a sea of deer in the headlights kids, and there’s my little guy, giving his perfect little cheese face to the camera. Very used to it.

So, when I signed up for this course, I knew I’d be all about grabbing joyful shots of pretty much anyone who shows up in front of me, but most especially my son. What I didn’t expect was a little nugget from the crazy talented Liz LaBianca in an interview in the week one materials. What she said was that “Our kids are desperate for us to enter into their world. They want us to be more like them… yet so many of us are trying to make them more like us.” I stopped in my tracks.

How often in his only two brief years have I already not played along because I wanted to get a shot of whatever kind of play he was engaged in? How many times have I told him, “in a minute” because I was busy with some other thing? Now, do I think he needs my completely undivided attention all day every day? Nope. Not at all. But when we went outside so I could practice some of my new tricks later on this week, and he said, “Mama, fly too,” you’d better believe I put my camera aside. In that moment I surrendered my need to keep on practicing to throw my own arms out and run airplane laps around the yard with him, to spin until we fell over in the muddy springtime yard, and to roll around laughing at the sheer silliness of it.

All the best,
Alison