The Road to Perdition: Girls on Film

I clearly have no problems taking photos of my child. At this point, I’m pretty sure my Instagram and Facebook friends hate me. Tom just removed me from his top eight, leaving him with only three. I stopped by the Recovery Room Tuesday night to say hi to the guys from Dumb Doctors (check that band out) on my way home from work. There, I ran into a friend who said to me, “Man, I haven’t seen you since you posted those last 50 pictures to Instagram!” We had seen each other three hours before. I take, and post, with this frequency.

Now this isn’t all that strange. I used to work as a photographer back in the days of film. Moving to Charleston back in the '90s sort of burnt me out on it. I worked for a certain camera store here where the owner of the location was…let’s say… disreputable. I also worked as a photographer for a service that took pictures of the sororities at College of Charleston (a low-paying gig with tremendous benefits). The combination of weddings, sorority parties, and an asshole boss finally got to me, and I put down my camera for a couple years and then never used it to make money again. In those years, the digital revolution took over, and now people’s cell phones take better pictures than the old point-and-shoot cameras ever did (okay, I’m not going to get into Leica cameras versus the iPhone 6). Every bored stay-at-home parent seems to be a “professional” photographer now, undercutting the truly talented event photographers out there. Instead of taking pictures in those years, I started shooting skeet as a hobby instead. It’s something I really enjoy. So when this Christmas came around, my wife, parents, and sisters all asked me what I wanted. I asked for gift cards so I could buy a new gun for this hobby. Well, this caused all manners of consternation, and I ended up getting a new camera. Which is fine, one should never expect a gift, and the camera has been a lot of fun. It’s rekindled some of the fun I had taking pictures 15 years ago.  

So these things have left my daughter well documented. But now my wife wants to have professional photos taken of all of us. I’m hesitant to get professional pictures taken at this age. I feel like we are going to end up as the weird parents with way too many pictures up in our house of our child. The next thing we know, we’re going to be throwing her princess parties (more on the princess bullshit at a later date—I have to be ready to fire some vitriol at that subject in length), then trying to make her a child actor, and then wondering why our child is hanging out at that college bar with the coke dealer (you know the bar….). It’s a slippery slope, dads. Don’t have your kid grow up to be the kid that hangs out at the coke bar.