Memories not Photographs

My mom has about 50 photos of her entire childhood. Not counting my Navjot ceremony, I have perhaps 300 (though I only have about 30 of them scanned and the rest are lost amongst my various houses). In comparison, Baby M has 2678 in only 9 months.

And, these are only the ‘good’ photos that I’ve decided to keep after deleting the ones in which he isn’t smiling or those that are blurry or those where my tree trunks (arms) are showing. We have all grown into a generation that lives our lives through photographs. In fact, it is my husband’s routine to go through the photos on my phone once he is back from work because he knows he can relive the moments he missed with his son simply through the 20–40 photos I end up taking of him (and then deleting because I am constantly fighting with space on my phone).

The sad part however is that despite all these photos, we have only a handful of photographs that are good enough to be hung on our walls or sent as gifts to loved ones across the world. While we all presume that we are ‘photographers’, the reality is that we are not. To truly capture memories — like a happy time of when you child was three months or on the birth of a new sibling — what is needed is for you to take a step back and for someone else to take those photos for you in a relaxed happy environment.

Even though we had planned to do our session outside, it was too hot on the day and so we chose a light summery theme for our shots and did them in her massive studio cum home in Vashi. She immediately put M at ease by playing with him and there was none of the ‘Look here’, ‘Do this’, ‘Smile Please’ that you usually associate with family photography. Instead, all I was told to do was keep playing with M and Sanya did her business in the background. Sanya’s colleague Sneha is amazing with kids and also helped me put M at ease with her drum playing.

The best part of the session was when we discovered M’s unusual attraction to watermelon. Sneha had made some frozen melon popsicles as it was summer just to eat during the session. However, M fell in love with these and wouldn’t let go. Rather than go with our existing props that we had planned, Sneha immediately put together a watermelon theme instead and we had great fun shooting the newly crowned ‘Watermelon Prince’.

My favourite part of the session was when we got to take some family photos — I can’t begin to express how much I loved that part. Even with us adults, there was not much of the posing, just 3 people having fun (something quite important when another wedding photographer is your subject). We took some lovely shots of all three of us as well as some candid ones of each of us playing with M.

Once the session was over, we got to view all the photos we took on an online portal and choose the ones we wanted edited and final copies of. The final product was then given to us in less than a week of our session which was super because I was eager to get them put up on my walls.

Disclaimer:

I was given the opportunity to experience a Looking Glass mini session on a complimentary basis. All views about the photographs and service mentioned above however are from my own personal experience.

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