When we were out yesterday, i took some lovely photos (well, i like them) of the girls. I was thinking as i did it, that it seems to be much harder to get a ‘bad’ photo of a child; something about the flesh depth on their faces, the mobility and the general lack of saggy or tired places seems to mean that they look charming more often than not. Whereas, a decent photo of me is harder to come by than a single hens tooth and the same seems to apply to a good number of other adults too. People rarely seem to like photos of themselves as adults, whereas i never hear that reaction from my children.
Then i took this one of Fran, which i really like by the way, but i think it sums up for me the change and how it might get harder. She’s losing her baby innocence, her skin is more finely chiseled than it used to be, her bone structure and tendons are more pronounced. She’s starting to get a glimmer of the teenage and adult Frances, one who will no doubt start to disklike photographs of herself in the future. Her expression is more knowing, with more thought and decision written on it and that seems to be a change; she is no longer living for the absolute moment, she’s beginning to plan and brood and consider.
But that said, i still think this photo is worthy of a film still; she makes me think of one of the more feisty Jane Austen girls.
It’s a fabulous photo! Definitely film-worthy, although I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Mary’ in The Secret Garden.
I know what you mean about them becoming less photogenic – partly it’s that they become more self-conscious, of course. And partly that they’re so full of life and motion that they look good, no matter what they’re doing. Unless of course they choose to pull objectionably awful faces! Maybe girls don’t do that as much as boys?
Oh, she approves of the Mary suggestion!!!!
you should update cast and crew with it . . . it’s quite a change from the one there at the moment – which is from a year ago?
Fran is beautiful.
I think there is a poise and dignity to that photo that bodes well for a very good looking young lady to sneak in where once there was an unspeakably cute girlie!
That is a lovley photo :0)
That is a beautiful photo – my newly-nine year old daughter appears to be incapable of having her photo taken without pulling a silly face, which is most frustrating!
Fran – you are very beautiful… you are the most beautiful 9 year old I know 🙂
Wow! Stunning photo – very sophisticated.
Isn’t a lot to do with it that we take about 500 times more pictures of the kids than ourselves? We easily dismiss the child ones where they’re talking or grimacing or whatever (had a quick look at your Flickr stream and there are at least a few like that 😉 ) and because there are so many, it’s easy to find sufficient pleasing ones. The pictures we have of C and his sister and my brother and me as children certainly aren’t all perfect – doubt yours are either 😉
I have quite a lot of photos taken of me, lol, though nowhere near as many as of the children, and I’ve given up feeling self-conscious about them. If I look at them all, it’s easy to see that in some of them I’m pulling stupid faces because of what I’m doing, in some of them I look fine, and in some I look really old and knackered (because I am!).
Anyway, am not really on a one-woman crusade to get this into the contentious category 😆 – that is a lovely portrait of Fran 🙂
Lovely photo
@Alison. my prob with adult photos is that in my head I look exactly like elle mcpherson. so catching sight of a reflection or seeing a photo is a real blow to my self image!
LOL at Helen! I suspect that I have a similar syndrome. In my mind I’m at least six inches taller, slimmer and I don’t have rabbity teeth.