Picture Day

It's hard with most kids, and especially GL, to get a natural smile when you tell them, "Look at the camera." With GL, "Look at me" is just as bad. He turns his head toward you and averts his eyes. If you tell him to smile, he puts on the goofiest, most unconvincing smile you ever saw. He usually has to feel his face to tell if he's smiling. And these are a couple of good photos; You wouldn't believe some of the ones I've deleted. Thank God for digital photography—I couldn't afford the amount of film it would take to get decent pictures of him, never mind processing.




At the January support group meeting, one of the families brought family pictures. They raved about what a great job the studio did with their autistic son. They even got him to smile at the same time as everyone else for a family portrait. Monday we got a coupon in the mail from the same studio. Tuesday we went in for pictures. They did a fantastic job. Of course we spent too much money.

What did the photographer do that got the boys to cooperate? They had one person posing everyone and getting them to smile, and someone else, who didn't talk or interact with them at all taking the photos. The "poser" or whatever you call her, told people where to sit, and then just talked and joked with them, not stopping to shoot any pictures. The photographer shot several frames in succession whenever she thought it looked good, and moved around to get various angles. She used a handheld digital SLR -- no tripod or other mounting system to move or adjust. She took 73 shots all together, so we were able to choose the most natural expressions. We walked in, they showed us to a room, took a bunch of pictures, sent us all to change clothes, took a bunch more pictures, downloaded them, put them on a huge monitor, we chose the shots we wanted, and the package we wanted, and how many sheets of each, paid for our order, and walked back out the door in just under an hour. We went to get a snack, and our prints were ready to pick up in 15 minutes. Easily our most enjoyable photo session ever. Even GL came out looking like Mr. Congeniality.










The rest of us came out looking better than a finger in the eye, don't you think?






And we got some great photos of BB, as usual.






Oh no, I hope that spot on his forehead isn't Scarlet Fever!