The Observer

Take Notes

Oassis

Lydia

Squirrel Spying

The Fast and the Furious

Taunting

Fools

Chicken Man

Temptation

In your Shoes

In this series I was following my kids, trying to capture and perhaps understand a little better, the relationship they entertain with each other. Of all the pictures I took, I kept the ones that had a similar color palette and strangely enough, many of them had blue and red somehow, somewhere in the composition. I'm glad as I think it's a good fit for the duality I wanted to portray. Having said that, this was probably one of the hardest photography assignments I had to do to this day. But I followed the advises that were given to me; I worked hard and shot a lot. The main difficulty I encountered was that I had to act solely as an observer; no matter what. I was always taking pictures very close to them while they were playing together or just relaxing and it was difficult to be ''invisible.'' On good days, they would completely ignore me and go on with their business and on bad days, they would hide or get mad as soon as they would see me pick up the camera. Another difficulty was that I had 2 people to observe; if I was to portray their relationship, I had to have a few pictures with them both in it. The light was also an issue; I was shooting almost every day for about 2 weeks and during the week days, the kids finish school at 3pm. There really wasn't that much time to get good interior shots with the light of day. And because I had to remain an observer and not alter anything, I just had to deal with it. And shoot some more. 

But being solely an observer also had its perks; I got the chance to really sit back and take the time to  watch them interact and play with each other. I was surprised with the results; I expected to capture a lot of fighting and crying scenes because in my mind, these are a big part of their relationship. But reality proved me wrong. The truth is that the fighting and the crying are what I remember the most; not necessarily what happens the most. Yes, there were some fighting and crying but they were few and far between. There was a lot of sweet moments that I usually miss either because I'm too busy doing something in the house or because I'm simply not there. And the moments they spend together playing nicely, I forget all about them. Memory is a funny thing; why do we tend to remember the  negative feelings and emotions over the positive ones? 

Going into this project, I did not expect to discover as much as I did during this short period of time;

I got to know my kids a little better but surprisingly, I discovered things about myself that I was completely unaware off. Things that you can only see if you take a step back and view it from a new  perspective. I think photography knows how to do that better than any other medium that I know off. I'm experiencing it now, and I know I'll experience it again in the future.