To be upset over ruined photo shoot?

I’m late to the party but I reckon that when the photos were received… the OP ended up loving them!

Once they are edited and put together hopefully you might have a few nice ones if not try a more casual outdoor shoot they do them in nature reserves and flower fields near us this might work.

Agreed. OP sounded self-indulgent and drunk.

Yep, wasn’t patronising at all. OP posted on an advice forum and kicked off at anyone offering advice because she didn’t get the sympathy she wanted. Nobody should be feeling bad for their comments here.

More focused on how things look than how life actually is, it sounds.

Nothing shows the “love and bond” between you and your son more than you forcing him to look picture perfect when he doesn’t want to, I guess. That’s not a love and bond that’s you forcing your son to do something he doesn’t want to do because YOU want to do it.

For gods sake get a grip. You had a disaster of a photo shoot, so what?

Perfect time for the “Kim, people are dying” meme. You haven’t lost your children. It’s not a big deal. You need help if you’re having this much of a reaction to a photo shoot.

They’d be staged even if they had turned out nice, what would they really show other than you forcing your children to be people they’re not? Doesn’t capture anything about who your children are.

Your reaction just proves this was more about you looking like you have the perfect family than anything.

Hopefully the photographer was capturing photos constantly and will have done some when you were not posing.

I don't think you were being patronising.

I'm sorry you lost your own mother young - but surely this would reinforce the importance of genuinely happy times together rather than staged photographs? Memories are so much more important.

I did photo shoots with DC and I think it greatly depends on the photographer. Some were amazing and one was totally meh.

No, I don't think that was the implication at all actually.

Someone mentioned the loss of the OP's own mother and she thanked them and said "it was a very long time ago now and I’m over it".

So no, I don't think that's what she was referring to at all. I think she's directly referring to Mother's Day being depressing because she didn't get the photos she wanted, which seems excessive. I have lost one of my parents relatively young, so I'm not unsympathetic to how difficult the day can be.

I think what I wrote was quite balanced and fair. It can be a bit disappointing not to get the exact photos you wanted - and I acknowledged that - but that's just parenting; not all children can be commanded to pose beautifully for the camera. I do understand exactly what that's like for the reasons I outlined. Sometimes you do just need to make the most of the hand you're dealt. And I bet there will be some lovely photos, even if they weren't the OP envisaged originally.

And I still don't think there was any call for the OP to have been quite so rude to some of the PP who were genuinely trying to be kind.

Do you think perhaps the fact that OP's own mum has died might be a significant part of why mothers' day will be depressing for her? Like could we try, really hard, to just find an ounce of empathy and tact here?

Oh OP, I'm so sorry. I'd be gutted too.

You absolutely aren't foolish - having nice photos of you and your children is a natural, normal thing to want, and given how many people do have lovely professional photos of their kids, it's not remotely unreasonable that you hoped it could be achieved.

I hate when things like this backfire and you're just left feeling miserable and out of pocket.

Do you own a digital camera yourself, or could you borrow one? If so there is loads of good advice for how to capture lovely family photos using a tripod and a remote trigger. You could also do this with an iphone on a timer, though it's a little trickier to manage the timings.

Or, make a plan with your husband to spend a day in a gorgeous place where he has his phone out, camera ready, the whole time. Don't tell the kids what's happening and see if he can get some lovely candids.

Someone I know had a similar experience with a photoshoot organised by grandparents. They had bought matching shirts for everyone, and the three kids (all aged under 6; two siblings and their cousin) just wouldn't play ball - one refused to have anything to do with the shirt, another wanted to wear ONLY the shirt, they were generally grumpy and bickering. They gave up in the end and actually tried again a couple of weeks later and it went much better. So you are definitely not alone in this experience.

Think if it like this. They're kids, they play up. You can always use the photos to blackmail them when they're teenagers and show their friends. But, yes. It is disappointing when they play up, but it happens, kids arnt perfect, would you really want them to be, it would make life very dull.

This post resonated with me. I find that I sometimes build up (too much) expectation for an event if I'm not in a great place at that particular time. It's like I can feel myself thinking "well it's all a bit shit at the moment but THIS will be ok/make me feel better." Then if it doesn't go to plan I feel worse than I would have done if I hadn't hyped it up.
So I understand why you might be feeling so shit about it.

It doesn't help for this, but for the future maybe try to really up the amount of photos taken of you with the family - impromtu or planned. I started doing this after a loved one died because I realised I didn't have many of us together. As a bonus, it's helped me not give a shit about how flattering some of them are because they have become a trigger for emotions and memories, which is more important for me.

I'm sorry people are being so insensitive about it, I know how you feel. It's especially hard when you've built something up in your head and it ends up being a complete flop, nevermind the waste of money.

I hope you managed to have a decent mother's day and your husband put in some effort!

I can never understand why men are so awful at taking photos or videos of us with our kids! I don't particularly like photos of me, but I've told my husband I want him to take photos of me and our boy just having fun, living life etc so many times and it doesn't happen! We went sledging a couple of months ago, I got plenty of photos and videos of him and our son, have the camera ready and point and shoot! Me and the boy went down on the sledge a couple of times together, directly at my husband with his phone pointed at us. He said we set off too fast, he didn't have time to click play on the video! How?? By the time he'd told me that when I asked to see them, our son was done with sledging and didn't want to climb back up the hill again. The hill was huge! Plenty of time!

I don’t think it’s so much that but OP has snapped repeatedly at posters in this thread, being quite unpleasant when they were genuinely trying to help.

And lots of us have been in similar scenarios with uncooperative DC - I have two autistic DC who wouldn’t smile nicely for a photo, even if you gave them every Pokemon in existence! I also have a DP who doesn’t take photos. I love photos of my DC and really treasure them. It’s not the ideal combination! 😂

So it’s not that I don’t understand the frustration. But OP admits she hasn’t even seen the full set of photos or edits yet and made reference to Morher’s Day being depressing now in her household. I mean,come on. It really does feel as she’s determined for things to be shit.

OP may not have got the exact photos she dreamt of but I bet there will be some usable ones. And much as she’s gotten cross at PP who suggested it, but this is one of those things you need to have a sense of humour about. Kids aren’t performing monkeys and actually, a nice natural photo outside with your kids having fun and playing around you sounds rather lovely. My DC have got high needs so maybe I’m just used to adjusting my expectations, but I don’t think this sounds like a waste of money at all.

Presumably you go on outings with friends and family with your kids? Ask them to take some pix of you and your kids when you’re all out. It will be more relaxed and I’m sure everyone will behave better with people they know.

I'm sorry you're having such a hard time at the moment, OP. It sounds as thought this photo fiasco is just the tip of the iceberg and you feel generally stressed and unappreciated and a bit of a failure. I really hope things pick up for you very soon.

I know what you mean and how you feel. We just had a major family occasion (50 people in attendance) and without going into too much outing detail, in the 350 photos taken by the photographer there are none of my immediate family or I! He seemed to be avoiding me especially and I highly suspect the organiser of the event who dislikes me had a hand in this. It’s so shit because I would have loved some decent professional photographs of us looking our best😞

With my boys I used to start with telling them to give me whatever they wanted for the first photo or two and then they had to do the serious stuff. Got it out of their systems and by photo 3 they were relaxed.

I asked DH to collect baby DD from childcare & take her to local shopping centre for photo session so I could send pics to our relatives living back home.
I had laid out clean clothes ready as I was at work.
All went well until photos came back and there was DD complete with dribble and biscuit covered bib. He hadn’t thought to remove the bib he put on her to wear in the car to keep her dress clean.
We still laugh at those photos that were taken in 1982.
That’s what memories are made of, hilarious not quite right photos!

maybe faux naive

I've had the same experience with family photo shoots, more than once, and the photographer has rearranged it for another day. The rearranged day wasn't actually any better but we got a surprising amount of good pictures from the shoots anyway 😄 and I never thought there would be a single decent one. If they turn out terrible you definitely have good ground to ask for a reshoot and just make sure you have plenty of good motivational negotiations with you like sweeties, bubbles, toys 😉

Woah - too true, too true!