100 Days Of Me By Them

I had been contemplating this project for a while, and decided that my five year old daughter and seven year old son would be responsible for capturing the remaining weeks of my pregnancy, the birth of their little brother, and then his time as a newborn. I wanted to see what they see, and to memorialize my last pregnancy through their eyes. I wanted to be inspired by their vision and instinct. I wanted to give them the knowledge and confidence to pick up my camera in the future so that I may continue to be a part of their visual history.

I document my family on a daily basis, but I'm very rarely ever in an image. At this time, I had been photographing my children every day for the last three years. I photograph us living our daily lives, but my presence in an image is from behind the camera. Our documented story has so far only been from my viewpoint.

99% of these photographs were captured using my professional (DSLR) camera. The majority of the time, I gave my kids the option to choose from a 24mm lens or a 50mm lens so that they would get a feel for the differences. A handful of times they used the 24-70mm lens or Hero4, depending on which lens happened to be on the camera, or what was available nearby when they decided to document. I taught them to focus on their subject, look for the light, movement and slow shutter speed. They documented without question, or they told me what to do and asked me occasionally to pose in a certain way. They only know back-button focus, and the metering was on auto for them, although they would look at the camera's screen for highlights and if I needed to adjust the settings. I've kept the crops of each photo as captured by each individual, and only minimally toned the images myself. The rest was accomplished my them. I am so grateful for my five and seven year olds for capturing my quiet moments, exhaustion, contractions, breastfeeding, and daily routine.