Take Five (or so) with Sam — Tales From the Nest

Sam and I participated in a creativity exercise for our photography playgroup yesterday. The original plan was to shoot for 90 seconds to capture some of the expressions and little details that make Sam...Sam! When the time was up, we would put the camera down and be done before he got bored or annoyed.

We ended up shooting for at least ten minutes. Whoops! It took us both a while to get into a groove. I realized fairly quickly that the best way to get natural expressions from him was to get him talking. He's such an animated storyteller, as many of us already know.

We talked first about Andrew and Kelly getting married next fall (and "the kiss"!) then Evie and school and some other stuff. He asked me where wind comes from, how it's "made", and shared his theory that tornadoes blow through Denton and push the air to Providence. I had to put the camera down at that point and clear up a few things; can't shoot and talk science at the same time!

I look at each of these thirty-two images and think, "That's such a Sam face!" and "Oh, that's such a Sam face!", and yet they're all so different. I don't know how many people, strangers included, pointed out how expressive Sam was as a newborn, but it was a lot. Looks like not much has changed. Now we've added marker-ink on the hands, shaggy hair that needs a cut, chapped lips and an amazing vocabulary to those expressions.

And we love each and every one of these Sams.