Camera-shy – a family story

Recently my daughter-in-law wrote a post about her three year old son hating to have his picture taken. And I had to laugh and laugh because he got that trait directly from his father.

I’ve always kept photo albums and liked to go through them periodically with my sons – they got into it too, and would bring me an album filled with pictures of them and ask me to tell them all about what they were doing when the pictures were taken. The only problem was that B absolutely hated to have his picture taken. That dislike had started shortly after his first birthday and no amount of begging, pleading or bribing would get him to change his mind.

But he started to notice that those photo albums had fewer and fewer pictures of him compared to his brother J. Finally he asked me about it and I had to tell him that if he wouldn’t let us take his picture, well then soon there wouldn’t be any of him in the photo albums.

Right about the same time, he’d gotten absolutely obsessed with puppies, specifically puppies with long, floppy ears. He had a stuffed animal puppy that he adored with the requisite ears and carried that thing around almost as much as his blanket (which never left his side, day or night).

So all of this was going on right about the time for school pictures at J’s school. I talked with B about how this was a great opportunity to have his picture taken so we could put it in the photo album. He wasn’t at all sure about it but was willing to try. We had J go first in the school gym – J’s never been shy about the camera and he bounded over to the chair, sat down at looked toward the photographer and that’s when things changed.

The photographer held up a stuffed animal – yes, that’s right, a puppy with long, floppy ears – and said, “Smile!” J smiled, the photographer snapped the picture and then boom! As J was getting up, B ran to the chair, practically threw his brother aside, plopped himself in the chair, looked at the photographer and almost split his face in half with the smile you see here. I'm still not quite sure how the photographer got the picture because everything happened so very quickly. B still wasn’t happy about the situation, in fact he’d almost been in tears when we walked into the gym, but he got his picture taken.

I wouldn’t say he ever grew to love having his picture taken but at least he got over the three year old grumpies.