Anatomy of a Family Picture

Our new camera has a delayed timer. It takes not only one picture, but as many as 10 - with a pre-determined delay between each shot.

So to take this year's family picture at Uncle Jack's house, we decided to try the "burst" setting on the timer. Set to take a picture every two seconds for 20 seconds, we hoped that at least one of them would turn out.

As you can see from the first photo (top), it's hard not to capture the photographer (in this case, Dad) in the picture when the shutter opens just two seconds after the timer starts.

We had two (really three) cameras going for this family picture, so there were actually two people who had to get back in the photo after hitting the "start" buttons on their cameras: Dad and Uncle Jack.

You can see Dad (second photo from the bottom) is nearly in place as Uncle Jack hustles to make his way to the spot on the far left of the picture. It's at this point that you're not exactly worrying about what the younger kids look like, only that everyone is in place and in frame.

In the trial run of this picture (not shown), Dad was trying to move in between Uncle Jon (who is holding Lauren) and Grandpa YD. But there was just too much shifting. That's why Dad ended up standing behind Aunt Dee Dee and not Mom.


The final shot (at right) shows everyone smiling and looking good. Now if we had just noticed that treasure hunt envelope (far right near the bottom) hanging on the brick wall.

Now if we could just move the camera closer to make out everyone's faces...