#thegallery

The theme for the gallery this week was 'eyes' and again i was a bit stumped at what photo to choose as this is so much of what i photograph. I love eyes..(not the whole squishy membrane thing….*gag*) but the depth to them, the emotions that flow from them sometimes despite of what the rest of the face is trying to portray. In children it is perhaps my favourite thing to capture. 

So i have hundreds of photographs of my own kids wide eyed and other people's who i have photographed. So i was somewhat stuck until i thought of this image..

this is not actually one of my photographs, it was taken by our friend and photographer Richard Joyce. It is my first daughter when she was probably just over two. Richard was doing a photography degree and was doing some family shoots to raise a bit of money and this is my favourite. 

What i love about this image and what probably started my fascination with capturing emotion is even though you can see little else of her, her hand is concealing her mouth and there are no clues as it is such a close crop to her face. Her eyes tell you her story, you can see her cautious curiousness of what the photograher is doing. A little playfulness lingering, twinkling. The sweet honesty and wonderment of little toddler characters. I remember she was happy as long as we were all in the front of the camera with her but this was taken when Rich had caught her on her own.

It is still one my favourite pictures. 

It also gave me that valuable insight that, as a photographer, you need to be able to see past the 'everybody look at the camera and smile' snapshot and try and help your clients too as well :).

As her mother i can look at this image and tell you that there is a more true and honest capture of who my child was then when she was so little and still is in many ways now she is 7 than there would ever be in a 'cheeese' shot. It has depth. You can capture a complete story in someone's eyes without ever needing to say a word. 

and that is why i love eyes….