ToledoPhotoGuy LLC.

The Eyler Family

I would like to say family photos are fun to do.  So many personalities and you get to see them interact with each other, pick on each other, it’s always a good time. What makes it better for me is getting to travel back home to snap some portraits with some fellow Alumni from good ole Petersburg!  It seems more and more these days, I’m too busy to make my own trip home so I like it when my work is my excuse to go home for a little bit.  Chris and her family cashed in a gift certificate giving her a waiver on the sitting fee,  sometimes that’s enough of a reason to get the family together and update the pictures on the wall.   I’ve never been a fan of photo studios at the local Sears.  Seems so impersonal and you just sit…and wait…. and then go in, almost like a doctor’s visit with the whole family.  What if you wait 30min?? or 45min?? Will the kids be on their best behavior after sitting for that long?  It’s a gamble, and after you get in,  it’s a matter of the youngest and whether he or she will cooperate!  So, in many ways,  taking it outside in a comfortable setting where you don’t have a line-up of people,  you can enjoy the time together and capture a more natural setting for the family and how they are with each other, instead of being a 3:30pm appointment.

Even so,  if you have some young kids in the mix and they are just NOT in the mood… then the all important “family group shot” becomes a little more difficult.  It turns into this  strategy game or battle of the wits.  On one side you have the parents and photographer and on the other…. the child.  Sometimes we adults win, and sometimes, the kid wins… and as the shoot progresses, I am able to  capture many moments that you may not get while waiting in a hallway at Sears.  It’s hard for the parent to gauge how well the photo shoot actually went because all they can remember is trying to get the kids to cooperate, so you always get asked “do you have any good ones? or did you get it?”  What they don’t know is I’m capturing those tiny moments in between too, the ones that get overlooked because they are too busy worrying about that one shot.   When the family finally sees their photos, many will ask “when did you get that?”  So it’s a nice surprise for them and more rewarding for me as the photographer and my final product.

    I always enjoy doing family reunions,  there are so many people  reconnecting that you almost forget that we live in an age where facebook and cellphones make it impossible to be disconnected.  However, with all that technology, there is still nothing that replaces an overdue hug or the laughter of family bonding over nostalgic moments.

I remember our small family get-togethers as a kid,  “the holiday family members” I would call them, but still we enjoyed the time we were together, then we’d part ways for the year knowing that over the next calendar year, we’d see each other at a wedding or another holiday.   This large group of 100+ was a lot of fun,  dancing, singing, laughing and the kids loved the camera.  Some were shy at first but eventually warmed up to me and I couldn’t help but leave there with a smile on my face thinking “when are we going to have our family reunion?”   LINK TO WEBPAGE WITH PHOTOS

    People that know me know I like to write as a form of therapy,  if it’s not writing, i’m doodling, or thinking about something to doodle..or do rather!  Blogs are great in that I can type out things that are just rattling around in my head, so I spill it… at the end I may feel better about it so here I am.  What the hell does that mean?  I don’t know,  I am just babbling cause it’s late and I’ve had an emotionally exhausting day.  My cats aren’t much for conversation,  so I’ll type out this nonsense for you to read and LEARN NOTHING!  I am really just thinking about my daughters and how they are going to be the next few years,  how crutial it will be to help with their self-esteem and confidence with so much against them socially already.  It bugs me that my 9 year old daughter is already getting on the scale and thinks it’s important to tell me she dropped 3 lbs.  Why?  My 6 year old likes to wear makeup and dress real pretty like mommy,  which is cute now, but do you ever think about how conditioned we are to assume what men and women have to do to themselves to be acceptable or moreso desireable??  It’s scary to think that I am a part of the same conditioning for these young girls because…well, I’m a guy!  I said my daughters would never play with Barbies…. why? why not?  is it telling them what is socially required, is it healthy to think we HAVE to look like Barbie and not Barney?  Why are their no chubby adult dolls??? seriously, I’m just going on tangents.  Really I am just concerned about my kids getting a fair shot at having a healthy self-image and I sometimes get worked up about the day to day things we do to damage it.  So,  I tell them they are beautiful and smart,  that’s a good foundation to work with.

Anyway,  if you think you have self-image problems,  take a test…. HERE IS A TEST.

     Taking pictures is a process.  Each type of picture can have a completely different process to complete the task at hand,  one of those being baby pictures.  I like babies, but THEY JUST DON’T LISTEN (come on, do kids really ever listen!)     So, you have to improvise (this is the fun part)  you get to see one or both parents making noises, faces, or a combo of the two and that’s where it gets pretty interesting!  Bubbles and balloons are a great way to win over a child.  Libbie Jo was no different,  just a month old and already getting to diva status.  She did great for her first photo shoot, we got some wonderful shots of the family enjoying the experience with each other.  All that I can ask is she doesn’t pee on….my…… um…..too late!

     It’s becoming a tradition for me to have, well, traditions now adays.  Pre-planning has never been my thing,  I always liked to just GO.  But with my job(s) seemingly becoming more demanding I have to be a little more prepared on the calendar to get away from these job(s)  It’s nice though,  you can look forward to it.  You also get to  pre-plan things on your pre-planned vacation. (which I don’t like to do either) hmmmm,  schedules and me just never fit.  Maybe that’s why I never did well in college, I think I just needed the class to just BE THERE so I could mosie on in whenever I felt like learning about rocks or philiosophy.  No such luck I know, but hey, I received my degree and it’s hanging on the wall looking as lovely and expensive as ever!  Anyway,  November has become a vacation month for me the past three years.  My brother had this great idea to plan a trip every year because he has a time share, so I was thinking it was a solid idea.  Well, that lasted one year, yep! we went on vacation one year in a row!! My brother, who shelled out thousands of $$$ for the time share…. couldn’t afford to go, so I’m thinking “well, what the hell am I doing taking vacations?!”  If he can’t afford to go on vacations where he already  pre-paid for it, what the hell am I doing?  That guilt trip on myself lasted all of 3 seconds!  I don’t stress over money too often, I seem to be pretty good at not holding on to it very long.  I read an article once ( I can read really) and it said this,  “the moment we come out of the womb, we are in debt”  so I’m thinking “put me back in the womb!”  I thought that was a little extreme but it got me thinking that I wasn’t going to worry so much about money or spending, just do what I needed to do with it while I had it.  So I didn’t take my brother’s route of worrying about Christmas or birthdays… I’ll worry about Christmas starting around December 19th, when I start my shopping! I’m kinda being serious there!!

        I chose to take the girls to a water park this year.  It wasn’t going to be a 7 day Disney trip by any means, but I thought it would be fun to do something new.  I’ve never been to a water park and it just so happens we live about an hour from the BIGGEST one in the country!  Kalahari is mammoth and it was not too bad on the wallet…. well, not on the front side of this trip anyway!  I made my reservations which the rooms are priced out for 4 people, so I grabbed my nephew to go.  He would serve as a nice buffer between me and my kids in case…. well,  HE WAS A GOOD BUFFER!   When you pull up to this place, being that it’s the size of 3 football fields, you can’t help but be impressed by it’s size.  The staff greeting you did an awesome job, of making us feel GREETED, they were throwing all sorts of smiles and excitement at us.  We couldn’t get to our rooms yet because they were not ready but they let us register and get our park passes and away we went….. 

        It was 100% filled the first night we were there,  it was all sorts of jammed up,  hour long waits for rides,  whistles chirping right and left,  tons of big pastie people walking up and down the paths trying not to fall or slip while getting to the next ride.  I bet the place is much different in July with the outside open,  but the girls had a blast and couldn’t get enough of it.  I myself found it exhausting and had enough of it, which is where the BUFFER kicked in. “Justin, take them over there!”  “Justin, take them on that ride, go to the wave pool, go get my camera, go go go go.”  Yeah, it worked out nicely and I got some funny pics of him to boot.  They cleverly put the huge arcade right by the park so when you went to the park, you had to walk through it.  and you don’t have to buy tokens, NO, they are genius, they give you a pre-loaded card so when you want to play a game, you just swipe like a credit card!  DAMN THEM!  $20.00 here, $20.00 there.  I got a laffy taffy out of my spending, and I had to convince the girls out of those 200 tickets for that!! GEEZ!  I think we might try a day or two next year in the summer, just to experience it with the outside as well.  It’s a great place and I give it two thumbs up, but two thumbs down on everything pastie!! but it’s november and we are in Ohio… Maybe in July it looks like Miami there.