Ruining Family Pictures

Newsletter 2024-01-02

Families ruin pictures, and pictures ruin families. I don’t have statistics for the number of divorces, disinheritances, and defenestrations caused by multi-generational photo sessions, but it has to be more than zero. I thought we, as a society, had learned our lesson and given up on this destructive practice, but I was recently proven wrong. At holiday gatherings on both sides of the family, relatives requested that we take a group picture together. Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. If only we had a terrible photo to remind us of how badly things went the last time.

My worst family photo experience occurred years ago at my parents’ house. I can’t give you an exact date since I’ve blocked out as much of that day as possible, but it was long enough ago that we used a digital camera instead of a phone. No wonder my kids think I grew up with dinosaurs. I was married at the time but some of my siblings were still small children. Catholic family planning is truly wild. For each photo, my mom had to walk up to a camera positioned on the TV stand, hit a button to set the timer, and run back to the group. Then, she had to walk back to the camera to view the result on a tiny half-inch screen on the back of the camera while the rest of us held position for what was turning out to be a life sentence. We took over a hundred and fifteen pictures that way before finally giving up. It took seventy-five hours. Three presidential terms began and ended. Two family members died of old age. None of the resulting photos were good, but maybe three were passable. By the time our amateur photo session was done, none of us ever wanted to talk to each other again, but at least we had some truly horrible pictures to remember our family by before it dissolved into nothingness. It doesn’t count as nostalgia if the thing you use to save your memories destroyed the thing you’re trying to remember.

Technology eventually made things a little smoother. Years later, my mom again requested a family picture. Before I could jump out of a window, my sister Sasha’s new boyfriend pulled out a tripod with a Bluetooth remote synced to his phone. He hid the remote in his hand and promptly snapped off a thousand pictures with us all still in position. The entire process took five minutes. That tripod and remote were the first worthwhile things science came up with since man walked on the moon. Sasha’s boyfriend instantly won me over. That was years ago. He’s still around for major holidays, but he and my sister have yet to tie the knot. She better be careful. If she doesn’t lock him down soon, I might marry him myself.

I went on Amazon that very afternoon to buy the same tripod. I use it to take the family photos I occasionally post on the internet. It was worth every penny because it saved me from having to knock on a neighbor’s door and beg them to take our picture while the rest of my family waited in formation on my front steps. It’s why people on this block keep their blinds down and their lights off. Even when I would catch a neighbor by surprise and guilt them into helping us, the results weren’t great. When I hand anyone my phone, I always tell them to take “a lot” of pictures. They usually interpret that to mean five rather than five hundred. It’s like they’ve never met children before. The proper way to take a group picture that involves a bunch of young kids is to tap the capture button as fast as you can until your finger cramps up, then switch fingers until all ten of your digits are completely unusable. That’s when the photo taker should hand the camera to a nearby stranger so that stranger can use up all ten of their fingers taking our picture. Only then will we have enough attempts to produce half of one good image. I pay for a terabyte of storage in the cloud and filled up three-quarters of it with thousands of copies of the same two pictures, each one ruined by a different kid blinking. Chaos works best when it’s spread around and done in turns.

Children have far more nefarious ways of ruining pictures. Our extended family is full of many babies and toddlers. My wife and I had all four of our kids before any of our siblings reproduced. I can’t believe they looked at our brood and still thought procreating was a good idea. The survival of the human race depends on young, childless couples not paying attention. Small kids are like wild animals. Big kids are, too, but lazier ones. They lash out in ways that don’t require them to get out of bed. Little kids are far more unpredictable, especially when having their picture taken. They know the ideal moment to pick their nose is the second your camera app opens. You can get nineteen people perfectly posed with their eyes open, looking directly at the camera and the whole thing will be ruined by a toddler trying to tickle their own brain via their left nostril. It doesn’t matter how good everybody else looks. Anyone who views that photo will only see the booger digger. The most amazing part is how long the simple act of nose picking takes. If you take five hundred pictures, in 499 of them, the kid will have their finger up their nose, and in the other one, it will be their entire fist. Then you have to get everyone together for another five hundred pictures. Eventually, the cloud will be clogged with slightly different variations of nose picking photos. That’s when all the servers will melt down and civilization will collapse. Next time, get that kid a Kleenex.

Another way kids wreck photos is with strategically timed temper tantrums. Saturday, we did a belated Christmas with Lola’s side of the family. Everyone was in attendance this year, including her one surviving grandparent. Right before we all parted ways for the night, Lola’s oldest sister insisted on a family photo. I suppressed an inner scream of terror. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad, I told myself based on literally nothing. Optimism depends on ignoring a lifetime of lived experience. Lola’s grandfather had to use the facilities first, which isn’t a quick process for him. I get it. I’m not exactly fast in the bathroom, either. There’s a lot of internet to explore. Half an hour later, we were finally ready to take the photo. At that precise moment, one of my nieces had a meltdown. Out of nowhere, she began bawling and refused to move into the frame. Everyone else waited patiently while she held four generations hostage. Her compliance was all that stood between us and freedom, and she knew it. Every child has an inner terrorist waiting to get out. Finally, her dad physically picked her up and pulled her into the group. She turned away from the camera, which was probably for the best. We ended up with some wonderful pictures of the back of her head. Or, rather, I did.

We didn’t have a tripod or remote. I didn’t know there was going to be a family photo. If I had been forewarned, I wouldn’t have come at all. Lacking technological assistance, one of us had to take the picture. I jumped at the chance not to be in it. I mean, I sacrificed my place in this treasured family photo for the greater good. In reality, I was doing myself a giant favor. I couldn’t be blamed for ruining the picture because I wasn’t even in it. Unless I aimed the camera wrong or put my finger in front of the lens, in which case I could easily mar five hundred pictures in a row. Years from now, perhaps we’ll forget that we didn’t have the tripod and someone will wonder why I wasn’t in the picture. They might speculate that my absence was due to marital discord, political exile, or because I accidentally locked myself in the bathroom again. Only that last theory is actually believable. It’s the real reason I take my phone with me. I never know when I might need to call the fire department.

More likely, though, no one will ever look at the images, just like no one ever goes back to see any of our other ones. I have thousands of pictures in my cloud that have yet to be organized. I mostly take pictures defensively so I can’t be accused of missing the moment. I captured it all, probably. If you want to prove otherwise, you’ll need six weeks to dig through the photo dump. Lately, the cloud storage service I subscribe to has been trying to convince me these photos actually matter. I get pop-ups every week about images that I took on this day years ago. It hits me right in the feels every time. I’ll see pictures of the kids looking younger than they ever could have possibly been. Somehow Betsy has always been thirteen years old and also, for a few seconds, a newborn baby with nothing in between. Seeing her as a toddler version of her current self is an affront to reality. I suspect witchcraft. It’s even more jarring when I see old pictures of myself. Last week, I came across this snap of myself and Lola from our first Christmas in 2003. 

It’s alarming in every possible way. We’d only been together for a few months and I was already bringing her home for Christmas. More disturbingly, she was willing to come with me. When you know, you know. Or, more accurately, when you don’t know, you don’t know. We didn’t understand the magnitude of the decision we were both just sort of stumbling into. I wouldn’t trust an eighteen-year-old to pick a tattoo, yet by that age we’d both found our romantic partner/co-parent/roommate for life. Showing up in those pictures was a big deal after all. Perhaps I should take photos more seriously and not voluntarily stay out of the next one at Lola’s parents’ house. But then I’d have to remember not to pick my nose on camera. On second thought, I’ll stay out of the frame for good.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James