December 19

Perhaps you've noticed that when I take photos, I rarely (if ever) use my flash? Like many camera-people, I have a strongly anti-flash stance, and I will do anything I can to avoid using it for many reasons:
it washes out the color in my photos
 it creates that annoying red-eye effect
 it often creates a distracting shadow in the background
 it uses up my camera battery faster than I'd like
it distracts Caleb when I'd rather he didn't know I'm taking pictures

But I'm starting to notice another, more hilarious effect. This is what happened when I turned on my flash tonight:

First flash photo, and you can see it in his eyes: "Ooooh! What's that?"

He loves the flash! As soon as he sees it, he is all smiles and giggles.

My camera does a quick little flash-flash-flash before it takes the picture, so I'm guaranteed to get a picture of a smiling attentive child!

(Though sometimes he's staring directly at the flash, as in this one.)
After a while, he started saying, "Fash! Fash!" and asking for it when I wasn't taking pictures.

He even became more cooperative when I was taking photos with the flash on. 
Before I took this one, he was asking for the flash. I held up the camera and said, "Caleb, go over there. Now put your hat on." And the kid complied!

This camera flash may end up being my mechanism to cope with the challenges of toddlerhood. I wonder how long the novelty will last?

No comments:

Post a Comment