Archives for "Photography"

"Wait, wait, umm, this is a bit embarrassing - he's trying to breast feed. Also, how are my veins?"

Went to see my newborn niece in hospital the other day.

My sister-in-law told me that my brother, rather than looking directly at his new daughter, had mainly been looking at himself holding her in a large hospital mirror, presumably shirtless and flexing his guns.

My feeling is that this is a perk of fatherhood that doesn’t dawn on men until shortly after their child is born. Whereupon they are thrilled to finally have a legitimate excuse to have dramatically-lit shirtless black and white photos taken of themselves.

It reminded me that I’ve never once window-shopped a glamour photography studio that didn’t have an obligatory black and white picture of a shirtless father holding his newborn child.

Typically, he will have some sort of tribal pattern or barbed-wire tattoo round one of his biceps, and be an ethnic minority, but importantly a light-skinned black man (Will Smith Mocha rather than Seal Black) so as to not put off too many white shoppers.

These guys so own this particular photographic category, that it is almost their inalienable right.

Which made me wonder at the potential for Baby Day Hire for men who haven’t yet had children but are getting on a bit and are worried middle-age spread will ruin the artistic seriousness of future photos.

Of course this niche industry is based on the ‘folk wisdom’ that all new-borns pretty much look the same, and with the deep shadows of glam shots, the child will be none the wiser looking at the photos in later years.

My other favourite good ol’ dependable glam photo category is the once-beautiful 40-something, desperately grasping for her lost youth, stripped down to her waist, wearing dirty blue jeans with her much younger boy toy who is playfully grabbing handfuls of her tits from behind.