Embrace the Camera Thursday

Cari over at Clan Donaldson wrote last week about Embracing the Camera by putting yourself in more of the photos with your loved ones. This is something that my husband and I have discussed several times in the past, but putting into practice has been a challenge. It is near and dear to my heart, and I am grateful for the reminder from Cari and grateful to Emily  for starting a Thursday link-up to remind us to put the idea into practice.

Even though the importance of putting myself and my husband in more photos, esp. with our children, has been on my radar for quite some time, there are various poor excuses for not making a good effort to actually do so.

Some of my silly excuses are as follows:

1. I am always the one taking the pictures, therefore I can't be in them
2. Erik is not a good photographer. Erik is a horrible photographer. The harder he tries to take a good pic, the worse it is, and this only seems to apply when I am one of the subjects.
3. We originally preferred the use of a video camera, the better to capture the cuteness of our children, the awesome things they do and say, that cute little laugh, the funny little dance, etc. We briefly owned a camera, don't anymore, yet still seem to be waiting for one to appear.

I know full well that one day, I won't be here anymore. God willing, my children will still be here after me. I don't want them to be trying to put together a slide show or looking through photo albums (or digital frames, more likely), and wondering where all the pictures are of their parents. That would be a tragedy. I am already a lackluster photographer as far as moms go, I frequently do not think to take pics for the moments that most others seem to remember, and I don't even get annual family photos done like I should. But dang it, at the very least we should all be in the daily photos of our lives, even if it's on my phone!

In the spirit of not having applied any makeup and grabbing the closest willing child, here is my photo for the week. Gabriel is the most photogenic person in our family, though all of my children take great pictures, but this one right here, my first born, loves to be in front of the camera. Next week, I want Genevieve to be in the picture somewhere with me, she's a hard one to get as the scowl on her face seems permanently applied these days.