Usually I like pictures best when I can make eye contact with at least one subject. I like the connection; I like the thud in my chest that comes when I stare back at someone who’s been captured in a photo. But in both of these pictures from today, no one is looking at me, and I like these photos very much anyway.
The top photo is my son, Zeb, age 12, and my daughter, Edith, age 1. They’d both just woken up after a relatively poor sleep (tents, storms, etc.), and it’s like it’s simply TOO EARLY and TOO MUCH to look at anyone. But even though they won’t meet my eyes, they’re having this moment of connection with each other that’s soft and tender, and I feel let in on it in this photo.
The bottom picture is of my son Leo, age 10, and Liesl, age 11, and it’s one of those photo-before-the-real-photo photos that hits me in all the right places. I love the way Liesl looks at Leo, with such encouragement, even though Leo isn’t looking back at her to see it. You can tell that he feels it. And I love the motion, the balance, the contrast between Leo’s bare feet and Liesl’s red shoes.