A baby portrait is worth a thousand words -- I mean bucks

Even before your child is born, people want to know what he or she looks like. It starts with the ultrasounds, and then requests for pictures from Grandma begin to be made before the paint is dry on the nursery walls. Somehow, expecting parents end up on marketing lists, and before your due date rolls around, you're already being guilted into capturing all those precious moments of your baby's adorableness to cherish forever. For many families, the picture taking begins the moment the kid comes out of the womb. At the hospital where I gave birth, Ms. Portrait Lady (I think that was her real name) visited us the morning after and wanted to start snapping pictures.

My husband and I sent Ms. Portrait Lady away.

I love taking pictures of my son -- I have an extensive library of digital photos and videos that I meticulously organize and maintain -- but I haven't done a lot of portrait photography. I don't like the phony poses, the cheesy backdrops and the expensive package deals that leave you with more photos than you know what to do with -- not to mention, just where do you put all those 8 by 10s?

And yet -- and yet! -- I have managed to have my son's portrait taken professionally every six months.

It started when he was six months old and able to sit in a shopping cart. We were bustling through Babies R Us one day, and a Kiddie Kandids person offered to take his picture for free -- no strings attached. My son wasn't wearing what I would consider a portrait-worthy outfit, but it was clean. And he was in a good mood. So we went home with a free picture.

Then in like two weeks, it was his first birthday, and that certainly called for a photo, right? Plus, we'd never had our picture taken as a family. So my husband, son and I all got to sit through the phony poses in front of the cheesy backdrops in the name of preserving family history and appeasing our fans family. We actually had to go back to the studio twice because the Man-cub was so squirrelly. There's only so much prancing, cajoling, singing and silly-face making you can do to keep a one-year-old happy and not chewing all the props.

Another two weeks six months went by, and I succumbed to the pressure to get my son's picture taken again. It was near Easter time, and he now actually had some hair. Those pictures have been the best yet.

My son's second birthday was this weekend, so once again I took him to get his picture taken. The Man-cub is as adorable as ever, of course, but his lack of hair has grown into a wild mass of unruly-yet-baby-fine curls that defy portrait perfection. I tried my best to make his hair look like ... something. Hair set, outfit smoothed, giggles induced, my son was ready to get his two-year portrait taken!

And then the photographer tried to get him to look at her by waving a big fan at him, the breeze parting his hair right down the middle of his head.

This is sort of what he ended up looking like:



I rejected that photo.

In the end, the portrait thing is OK, I guess, if you don't end up spending a lot of money. One of my friends whose children are now out of the house told me he spent over a thousand dollars on his kids' portraits. He begged us to save the money and take pictures ourselves. He had a shell-shocked look in his eyes. It was the look of a dad swimming in overpriced pictures hanging on the walls, stuffed into boxes and falling out of albums.

Will my husband and I learn from our friend's experience?

I'll let you know in six months.