::A Geek in Korea::

I’ve been to my second photo shoot in the past two weeks. This all happened because my wife’s family knows someone with a photo studio. We were invited to take pictures there with my family when they were in Korea out of obligation to them needing business. We already had a contract for baby pictures, but we didn’t have anything exclusive for taking an entire family picture until the final shoot for the first birthday celebration. We got a few family pictures taken with my folks, then waited until my day off this week to get some shots taken of Glow. We only take these pictures for memorial and archival sorts of purposes to decorate the house. They aren’t some sort of sick beauty pageant thing.

Little did we know, but Glow is very good with being in front of a camera. She has lots of pictures with her in the spotlight now. Most of them are taken by me, that’s for sure, but my parents and relatives were snapping pictures of her all the time while they were here. She’s very good about being around other people too. My relatives had no problems picking her up and carrying her around.

There is some sort of Korean term for “fussy babies that don’t like strangers”. According to my mother-in-law and an Aunt, there is a period of time where the baby should be exposed to people outside their family from time to time, otherwise they will become too scared to be around people they don’t know or see every day. I’m not sure if this is something true for all cultures or not, but I think my daughter isn’t suffering from this problem if my relatives’ trip was any indication. Glow was comfortable with everyone.

When we went to the photo shoot, there were no other babies around. We arrived for four “concept” shots. This was basically putting Glow into different outfits and posing her for a couple of minutes until she got tired. Then we would hold her for a bit, change clothes and scenery and start over. After a few minutes there would be another costume change and we’d move on. We did two costumes before she started to get tired. She had missed her nap and was tired from her smiling and looking cute for the camera. She needed a nap, and I was fine with trying to get her more rested before we shot any more pictures.

My wife helped put her down for a nap in the studio and I watched her for an hour. My wife had errands to run, and the photographer was on a lunch break. When the lunch break was over, my wife returned and we resumed the photo shoot. Since we were running long, the next set of appointments started showing up after lunch. Glow got to see a few other babies before we got ready to shoot again. All the parents were asking questions and scoping out the other babies in the studio.

One of the other women said that their baby was the same age as Glow. They had visited the studio three other times to try to complete their four “concepts” but they couldn’t finish because the baby would get upset in the middle of the shoot. She said her child wasn’t comfortable around her and would cry when she was too far away while they took pictures.

Glow only cried briefly while we changed clothes for the second or third time during the day and the photography assistant dithered on what accessory to add. She never cried while the photos were being taken, which is amazing. The photographers never pushed Glow to take more shots than she could handle, and they were excellent handling her with care and making sure she was having fun the entire time.

We went back in with Glow, took a few more “concept shots”, and were finished after the nap in twenty minutes. It had taken a long time because of the nap and everything, but it was the second time we had finished a four “concept” shoot in one trip. The first time they had taken pictures Glow almost had fallen asleep too.

When we were waiting outside the studio to pay, the next baby arrived. This baby was also the same age. The parents said that they had visited five times, but their baby was crying too much to continue with their shoots too. As soon as the photo shoot after us got started we heard the photographers taking shots and trying to get the baby to smile just like they had with Glow. Soon there were baby tears and a parent saying, “We’ll have to try this again.”

I can’t even imagine having a baby that is so afraid of strangers. It’s not like Glow goes out in public all that often, but she doesn’t cry when she sees someone she doesn’t know either. If that is any sort of milestone, I think were doing SOMETHING right.