LAST WEEK (late spring/early summer) I did an outdoor children’s photography session, late afternoon, at Sims Park in New Port Richey. Three kids (ages four, nine).
The oldest girl seemed to spend the entire session looking as though she would rather NOT be there; funny.
The youngest child had two full-blown meltdowns: one was over a juice pouch; I have no idea why he lost his cool the second time.
The seven-year old found the splash pad sprinklers and started screaming as if she’d been shot…then ran through them another dozen times. I photographed everything.
Her mother cried when she viewed the finished gallery. She wasn’t crying over how great the photos were. She was crying because she’d stood within fifteen feet of all of it and hadn’t witnessed or experienced most of it. Her job was refereeing the juice pouch meltdown, checking her phone and being the typical parent.
No one told you about summer. A lot of the time you are literally in the same space where your kid is playing and yet you end up missing it.
School will start again in August and by the time the school doors close for summer vacation, that particular “kid” — that goofy grin, that gappy smile, those arms flailing around while she runs with her elbows leading the way — has disappeared. That doesn’t mean they are gone forever. They’ll disappear like next year’s child shares the same name as last year’s.
It’s not that you don’t “lose” these moments because you’re too busy. It’s that you’re busily enough distracted so that you can walk past these types of moments with errands, sweltering heat and making sure everyone eats dinner and before you know it, it’s October and you remember that summer happened but you can’t quite describe what it looked like.
Everybody photographs the first day of school. Backpack, front steps, the little chalkboard sign with the grade written on it. Same shot every August, different number. Almost nobody photographs the Tuesday in July when nothing happened like the screen door banging all afternoon, kids running the yard till it’s too dark to see the ball, the kind of evening that costs nothing and ends up mattering more than anything you would ever pay for.
You don’t lose this stuff because you’re too busy. You lose it because you’re busy just enough to walk past it with errands, summer heat, dinner and one day before you know it, it’s October and you know summer happened but you can’t tell me what it looked like.
I can’t get all of it back for you. I can get a few hours of it. The actual real stuff not the posed version, the real one. If you’ve got a kid who’s currently this exact age, doing this exact thing, that window’s open right now. It won’t be in September.
Book a session before the light changes and your free Saturdays go back to soccer.