Baby Photo Shoot

(One of several posts covering the last few days.)

The last few days have been a whirlwind. I went home to Mayville to help put on Melissa's baby shower and then we had Mother's Day at our house today. And before I left for Mayville I was hurriedly getting my Mother's Day preparations together. One of the things that I had planned was to take some new photos of Olivia for her grandmothers. Originally, I was going to take her to Sears for portraits since I got a coupon in the mail. I got all excited about this because I am not a good formal portrait photographer myself. But after I went online and looked at their backgrounds, etc., I was not impressed. It just seemed cheesy or something. This perplexes me because I've seen other kids' portrait photos and they don't strike me as cheesy. I also didn't care for JC Penney's set ups, either. ???

So I decided that a trip to Meijer Gardens was in order. Because we were quite busy, the earliest I could get over there was Thursday, which turned out to be a hot, sunny day. I took Olivia in the baby carrier instead of her stroller which turned out to be a bad idea because she is HEAVY, I had to carry my big camera and camera bag, and the gardens cover a HUGE area. Also, because she was in the carrier, she didn't have a good sun shield. Which I didn't consider until AFTER we arrived at the gardens. Fortunately I always carry her sunhat around. But the only arm covering I had was her hoodie, which combined with her outfit, made for quite a warm little girl that made my front side a bit sweaty.

We didn't arrive until around 3:00 because I was waiting for Olivia to take a nap so that she'd be in her best mood for the photos.

She never took a nap.

She wasn't in a good mood.

I got a good first shot which enthused all her Grandmas:



But it went downhill immediately thereafter, with shots that looked like this:



People that walked by would say things like, "Look, how cute!" or "Look at her getting her photo taken!" or "Oh, how fun!" Were they not looking at my child's face? She was crying and and frowning and wanting it to be over. I am quite surprised that no one came up to me and said, "Do you really think you should be doing this? It looks like you're torturing your child." Perhaps these people had been in my shoes before and understood. Fortunately, I had taken some winners earlier in the week so all was well. She's looking more and more like JB: