Anatomy of A Group Photo

If you were hoping for a Day 4 post, you're going to be disappointed. We hit the road early so we could get home and see some out of town friends, Amy & Matt. We didn't even get one picture of those two, I just realized. I'll look later to see if I can dig out an earlier picture of the boys with them.

As I sorted through the 400+ pictures we did take, I chuckled at this one particular set of pics we took on Christmas day. Anyone with kids or who has tried to corral a group of adults for pictures will know what I'm talking about. It's hard to get everyone to look at the camera at the same time, right? And add one or two more cameras, beer, wine and family of people who generally talk over each other...well, so much harder!


We'll start with the Kilkenny's, mostly because they're not here to defend themselves.

Marianne tells Sean to sit still. From what I heard during the night, she's probably been telling him this most of his life.

  

Oops. Sorry Pat. Eyes closed.

Now Sean. Seesh, pay attention, Kilkenny boys.

Not too bad. Pat is looking at...not really sure, there wasn't a camera over there. The front door is over there though, so he could have been trying to mentally escape. Just go to your happy place, Sean. That's how I cope.

The Elders did surprisingly well. I am attributing this to the fact that none of them probably see very well without their glasses, so they just kept looking towards the flashes and smiled. My dog Madam does this. She has cataracts and can't see worth a damn, but she does know to look toward light.

Now the Relatively Youngsters. For those of you who don't know, this foursome grew up together in Virginia Beach.

To give you an idea of how far back these four go, take a look at this picture Marianne gave us at our our wedding rehearsal. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but Sean isn't even born yet, and here is [left to right] Angela, Pat and Keith. Angela and Keith are crying because they both wanted to sit in the middle of the wagon, and Pat is probably crying because he could care less and now has to sit in the palatable field of tension the other two created. Hysterical. This is parental photography at its best, kudos to Marianne for getting this shot!

Anyway, back to the current time. This foursome did really well. Sean is moving and talking, but it adds a little life to the picture.

Then, the Ellermans. Oh my.We're a hard bunch to capture.

No one is ready, except Grampie & his beer bottle. And maybe Keith, but he doesn't have his baby ready yet.

Hello? Evan, over here! And Grady, if you can at least pretend that you're having a good time, that'd be great.

There we go. I'm not going to tell you how many bad shots were between the last one and this one [7].

At least we got one good one, and that's all that matters.