Photographing a family with three children and two dogs is gloriously complicated. I see bits of me and my own siblings in the way they interact with each other. The way they protect one another but squeal when when they have to sit too close and touch. The way they race each other with fierce competition but stick together when mom and dad want them to stop. My sisters, as young girls, could fight all day long but when bedtime came, you better believe they’d end up in bed together for pillow talk and security from the dark. It’s a sibling thing. You either get it…or you don’t.
Trust me, being one person up against 7 live beings with 7 different personalities and 7 different agendas is a lot of work. Most people, when asked to capture a beautiful family portrait (preferably vertical and at least two of them to be hung in the living room in predetermined frames) would run away when they saw what I was up against: boys running their hearts out in opposite directions begging to play duck, duck, goose; a sweet little girl unable to keep up with her brothers and pretty much uninterested in them anyway; a no doubt exhausted mother who had been planning this in her mind for so long; two overly excited dogs running circles around all of us and peeing on my camera bag; one father who shakes his head and looks embarrassed at this scene that plays out in public for everyone to see. I tell them this is normal. This is my job. This is what I love to do.
Like a magician, I transform the chaos into a family portrait. Something they can hang on the wall…big…in those predetermined frames. I only need less than a second to record who they are right now. Each one of those personalities is present; not covered up with a “say cheese” grin. This is the Bhamra’s…in all their fun-loving glory.
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