Now, while a snarl looks kind of cute and cuddly on people like Elvis and Dick Chaney, when someone looks at you with hate in their eyes for no good reason, it can be a bit disturbing.
In my career as a photographer I have taken hundreds of thousands of images. Some good, some bad, most good enough. A favorite subject of portraits is children. I have shot kids as young as two days old straight from the hospital. I have shot moody teens that hate the world. I have shot two year olds that don’t want to be there, they really, really don’t want to be there.
But the one constant that I have found is that the kids are mostly OK. Kids under thirteen are most often sweethearts that will do whatever you ask/tell them to do. By the time they are thirteen, they have had enough of people bossing them around and will often have smart answers for anything you say to them. But most of them will still do what you want them to do for the tenth of a second it takes to make a portrait.
Parents, however, are all most without fail total and complete assholes. No, that isn’t fair, parents have a hard and thankless job. Most of them are doing the best that they can do, and most of them can get through the little things in life like having their portraits made. The handful of real, hardcore assholes, they stick out from the crowd.
From time to time I meet a parent that is highly offended that I tell their children what to do. I’ll be honest, this is about as baffling as it is possible to be. Telling people what to do is what having a portrait made is all about. These people not only don’t like me to tell their children where to stand or sit, they are furious that I have the balls to speak to them at all. This small group of insane people will look at me with total hatred and say some variation of Don’t Talk To My Child, I’ll Tell My Child What To Do. Have You Got That?
They like to use their pissed off parent voice for this little lecture and I am totally embarrassed to admit that I feel about two inches tall when these dipshits talk to me like I am one of their fucking little bastards. I have never had one of the kids act upset, or be mad when I have told them to do something, but I would not be total shocked if they did. By and large, the kids are not idiots, just the parents. This whole entitlement fantasy that their parents are giving them can only come to a bad end at some point. Mommy and Daddy are not always going to be there to protect you from mean and evil people like portrait photographers that want to take your picture. Or teachers, or coaches, or bosses, or spouses, or their own children, or the endless list of people that boss all of us around all the bleeding time.
If it is really and truly offensive to these parents that anyone else tell their kids what to do, how the hell do they have any other life than following little Timmy around making sure no one ever tells him to do anything? Do they follow the kids to school and object when they are told to get in line? Do they make their own street signs so The Man doesn’t get to boss their babies around? Or is this just one of those things were parents get to be fucking assholes and everyone says, well, OK, your a parent, you have the right to be a fucking asshole for no god damned reason.
This is a challenge I have a hard time dealing with. Being a portrait photographer means doing two thing all day long, staring at people and telling them what to do. No one likes being stared at or being told what to do. Still, most people willingly surrender to my authority when they walk into my little studio. For maybe five minutes I am in charge and most people fall into line without too much fuss. But every once in a while there is this totally bizarre bit of business about Don’t Tell My Child What To Do. It is a rare enough occurrence that I don’t have any prepared response for it. But it really rattles me when it does happen. So if you are a teacher, or a day care worker, or someone else that hears this bullshit line all day, I’d like to know how you deal with it.
And if your one of the slightly wacko parents that think pissing off people who work with your kids is a dead brilliant idea, where did you get this idea, and does it ever turn out positive?
Just wondering.
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