Some people just do not like having their picture taken and my wife's grandmother is one of them. We were visiting over Thanksgiving and I wanted to get some shots of her and her husband since they are photographed so infrequently. I took some shots of my wife's grandfather and he didn't seem to mind much. I turned the camera to grandma and she gave me this arm wave and said "you know I don't look good in pictures".
That was such a funny phrase to me. I had no idea that she didn't look good in pictures. At 87 I think she looks great all the time so an instant in time should be equally appealing, but she was convinced that I knew it wasn't so. She immediately got up from her chair and went inside far far away from me.
I didn't point my camera at her again for the rest of my visit. She did pose with the entire family as my wife's cousin took a few shots. At least we will have that. The more I think of it I think this photograph captures her spirit quite nicely.
My approach to photographing people is normally to make sure we both are aware I am shooting and give them the opportunity to protest. In some cases we may need to be a bit more discreet.
1 comment:
a friend of mine told me I took the first picture of her she'd liked in over 20 years. The last picture she'd seen of her she liked was in high school. 2 decades of hating pictures of herself, that she'd seen.
That's quite a barrier to overcome as a photographer. To build the trust with the subject, in your abilities, vs years of bad snapshots, candid pictures with terrible light and off guard unflattering expressions.
So it isn't a surprise that most of us think we look terrible in pictures - we do in most of the ones we've seen!
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