Yesterday afternoon, I did some promotional photographs for “Insecurity,” a new musical by Mickey Zetts appearing at the Midtown International Theater Festival. I’ve known Mickey for a long time now, and he’s just an immensely talented perfromer and songwriter. Most importantly, he has the good sense to cast my beautiful and talented wife Paula in his show.
Having a 2 1/2 year-old child, Paula and I tend to “trade off” on creative opportunities. So getting me to shoot shots for a show my wife is in is difficult at best. The “Suckers” shot involved an on-site babysitter (thanks, Tesse!) and so did this one (thanks, Tania!). Thankfully, Benjamin was very, very good this time around, and even napped for a while! Miracle!
Where this shoot differed from the last one, though, is that we had to get a few… provocative… shots. Nothing explicit, of course, but it’s kind of hard to say, “Bend over a little more” and “show some more cleavage” when your wife and son are in the room. Thankfully, I have a wonderfully understanding wife, and a child engrossed in watching “Wall-E.”
As always, the rest of the Insecurity photo shoot can be found on Flickr.
This evening, I endeavored to photograph one of my favorite subjects: My two-year-old son, Benjamin. Naturally, everyone has the innate desire to photograph their children, but the ante’s actually upped a little in my case. This past Christmas, we purchased a digital photo frame for my in-laws, and we promised them that we’d update their photo collection throughout the year. So I’ve got to make with the picture takin’, or the in-laws gonna’ be pissed…
There are several inherent hazards to photographing the toddler in his natural habitat. First and foremost: Toddlers never stand still for more than 0.03 seconds. It makes it somewhat difficult to set up your studio strobes when your subject will happily stand everywhere except the spot you metered on. (Why yes, I do whip out my studio strobes to take a photo of my toddler. Doesn’t everyone? 
) And focusing? Good luck.
Then there’s also the issue of trying to photograph him in my decidedly non-photographer-friendly apartment. Since there’s a two-year-old living there, it’s always cluttered and messy. Since it’s in New York City, it’s microsocopic in size, so the white walls spill my light everywhere, and I have to use real wide lenses which makes it look all fun-house-mirror-y when he comes close to the camera, which he loves to do.
And still, sometimes, it all works out:
