Family Christmas Portrait 2008

Welcome to my Christmas Family Portrait

As you may or may not know, this is not my living room but my work. I am a professional portrait photographer and this is all a backdrop, some of the other studio managers and I discovered that this background stage allows us to "personalize" the portrait in ways we have never been able to before.

There is a lot of detail in this portrait that you might not notice otherwise.

With my mom's death Aug 6th, I have been depressed to the point where I don't feel up to celebrating holidays, more that I just don't want to fuss. Last Christmas we went to a lot of trouble to make it a fun Christmas for her. We invited the whole neighborhood over for a coffee and cookies party. (more on that later) The past two years we have included mom in the Christmas greeting cards and this year I didn't want to exclude her. So I managed to get her in this picture.

On the fireplace mantel you might notice a few framed portraits. On the left side is my favorite Christmas portrait of the boys, Caspain is 3 and a half, Stirling is about 11 months old. I just love this picture and it along with most of these pictures are on my fireplace mantle at home. Next to this one is a family picture that was in my mom's home. I am the littlest one on the far left side, my sister Mary is standing in the back, brother on the right, mom and dad sitting down. My mom and dad are next in a formal portrait in the middle, taken in the late 70's it is another one of my favorites. On the top right side is a picture of Mike and his daughter Malena at her graduation from college. Under that picture is one of my dad on the way to Arkansas in the 50's. He has the engine hood up and he is filling up the raidatior with water, apparently this was something that had to be done every few hundred miles.

There are two wood toys my dad made in this picture, behind Mike's head is a frog, and on the floor beside me is a dog. I love these toys, dad would putter away in his shop for hours working on this and that. Sometimes he would come out with something cute like these. I have others that he has made and cherish them all.

Now we come to the quilts. The famous YouTube "Boy Quilt" is near Caspian, and the other she gave me is on the left side. I really like this one because of all the blues and the fabric choices. She even has flannel in it, that quilt never made an interview so I don't know when she made it, though I can't remember ever seeing her work on it. I do know it is a string quilt that is just a mix match of whatever you have lying around. The "Boy Quilt" mom made before she left Arkansas sometime in the 1940's or before.

You will notice from the picture where I am sitting on the floor, I am wearing two different socks. This is a typical day for me as is all the black my family is wearing. Caspian has several mechanical pencils in his pocket, again this is typical of him. Don't know why he needs several exact ones, seems like he should have a pen in there as well but he doesn't.

What is missing from the picture are two Christmas stockings hanging by the fireplace. I made these years ago for the boys, and they each took a couple years to make. Mary did all the finish sewing and I love her for that as they came out beautiful. During the rest of the year they are kept in the fire safe, that's how precious they are to me.