Every once in a while you meet a child who is so attracted and attractive to the little people of the planet that they are seen constantly surrounded by little critters. Lexi is such a child. He loves to observe and be around anything that crawls, flies, swims, slithers… anything that is moving really. He is the child the dragonfly chooses to land on and linger, and the one that the little baby lizard likes be with and who plots to take one of the Gibraltar apes back home in the car!
Small things draw out our softer side. We see babies and we change our behavior immediately, we smile, we speak softly, we ‘ooo’ and we ‘aaaa’ at them. Babies and little creatures are simply so cute and we are programmed to want to care for them and protect them, most of us at least. And it is a very clever programming as you would expect from our maker for the benefit of the little people.
photo taken: baby snail on Lea’s palm
Today I had a photo shoot with an adorable 3 week old baby girl, little Juliette! She has tiny little feet and the cutest little hands, and a face with a million changing expressions. Babies have the power to draw a smile from almost everyone who sees them. They are miracles, each single one of them and they are so innocent, clear, uncorrupted, reactive, connected, simple and yet very complex. To think of the amazing power that is with them to allow them to grow and multiply in size at an exponential speed! They heal much faster, they have during their growth a hundred times the energy we adults have and they can learn and absorb at stunning rate. Miracles!
I love photographing children. When I look at a child I see the child, just them, whatever they are going through at that exact second, their whole universe is with them in that moment. Their eyes are like portals to a world so far away. Children are so close to what we were meant to be like, pure human essence.
You point a camera at an adult (myself included) and you mostly get their personality, their formed identity, their inhibition, their strange psychologies, and it casts a shadow on their eyes and their faces. That is why I love candid shots so much . I try to capture humans in their essence, just being, doing and reflecting their inner worlds.
Photo: toddler on the street, Shanghai, China