Hitting Myself in the Head

I'm so happy that competition is alive and well in the photo studio business. I remember in the early years going through tons of stress scheduling an appointment at least a month in advance with Sears or Wal-Mart, dressing Juliette in her best baby clothes (during a Sears appointment I took a baby dress off the rack, hid the tag and had her picture taken in it. I just couldn't justify spending $40 bucks on a dress that I needed for less than an hour), finding the coupon that came in the mail, waiting for our turn in line (planning naps around appointment time), trying our best to make her smile (or at least no cry), trying our best to choose which picture was "the one" under extremely stressful sales tactics designed to make parents pay through the nose and then trying to decide which family member got which picture (size, qty etc...). Some of the sales tactics included taking a picture, showing it on screen and telling the parents that if they liked it, they would have to commit to paying for it immediately at which point other pictures would cost at least double the cost of the first one or the parents could choose to delete it immediately and hope a new shot would be better. We always managed to commit to just one picture but it usually cost us a few grey hairs in the process.

Today, we go to any of the large Loblaws studios. For less than $6 you get 4 sheets of pictures (a mixture of wallet size, 5 X 12 and everything in between). They take a bunch of pictures that are reviewed with software that let's you zoom, crop and adjust contrast as required. There is usually no waiting if you show up during the week and there are so many of them that it can be done on the spur of the moment. We just finished getting Nicholas and Juliette's pictures done again. To help Nicholas smile I used a stuffed duck and hit myself in the head with it. It works every time. Of course Juliette is a bit more sophisticated. During our last set of pictures I tried to hit myself in the head but she just didn't think it was all that funny. Luckily I had Nicholas and when he started hitting himself in the head we all cracked up. This time around Juliette just did her thing. She was great at posing. She could have been a model in an Old Navy commercial. At the end of the shoot we picked a picture that had a similar pose as Nicholas and one that made her look like she was still a little girl. She's almost 5 but she's big for her age and almost more mature than dad. We keep telling her to stop growing but I guess that’s not really an option.