To be upset over ruined photo shoot?

[iamjustgutted]

Gutted about this.

I spent admittedly far too much on a Mother’s Day photo shoot. Had it today and was awful. Kids not playing ball at all; ds wild and charging around like a complete lunatic, dd whiny and refusing to do anything she was asked.

I know it’s just kids etc but I can’t lie; I’m gutted.

DH isn’t around a lot…
It isn’t just the photos, it’s a general sense of nothing I do going well and backfiring massively. It does feel at the moment that every time I try to do something nice either for me or someone else it backfires and ends badly.

@iamjustgutted - may I suggest that you perhaps step away from this thread as it seems to be upsetting you further instead of helping. Some time after the weekend you may want to try posting in Relationships about what is really going on as there is clearly so much more troubling you than a ‘ruined’ photo shoot. 💐

@JustGiveMeReason i think if someone says You're feeling upset, OP but listen to the voices of experience on here! and that ‘seriously’ it’s ‘fine’ then pointing out that is patronising in the extreme is reasonable. I don’t think we need another five page discussion about it but accept I can’t control that. However, I said it was patronising because it was patronising.

Can you really not see the funny side?

I’ll step away when I want to step away, thank you @Enrichetta . I am not sure why I need to post in relationships but shall bear that in mind

No, I’m afraid I can’t. £80 is a lot of money and I wouldn’t have spent it if this hadn’t been important to me. Would you find it funny if you lost £80?

Sorry you were gutted OP, it's horrible when things don't work out how you are hoping. Unfortunately kids don't always appreciate what adults are trying to do.

That is indeed true!

OP, I feel your pain. I have no photos of me and my son as a baby and then when he was 18 months I left his dad, just as Covid hit.

I would often set my phone up in the garden/living room and set a video off to record and then play together. I could then take screenshots from the video.

As others have said, you might be surprised and I promise you’ll look back at this with fond memories one day.

My favourite picture of my son is a professional one from my sisters wedding. Son is about 1, in a full suit, laud on the floor having a tantrum. The family surrounding him. It’s such a lovely picture.

It’s probably not going to make you feel better but the only professional photos my mum got my older brother and sister were not playing ball.

They were basically forced to be there in clothes they didn’t want to be in. Their face in the only photo that mum got looked like it could have been used for their passport pictures.

Mum grew to love it. It pictured what life with teenagers was like. On the other hand my husband’s family had professional pictures every year. The whole house is filled with them and honestly it’s creepy. All in the same
poses, same creepy huge smile, all looking like a stock picture than an actual family.

So they wouldn’t have been creepy at all, just us in lovely picturesque parkland … but obviously that is not what happened.

I wouldn’t waste £80 on a photo shoot like this, but you chose to do that.

You do have photos, and you will be able to look at them and see the humour in how it went wrong surely?

Or are you generally quite negative in your outlook? Is there something else going on with you?

A photo shoot with young kids is never going to be enjoyable.

Can I ask super nicely and as politely as I possibly can without it being taken in the wrong way that people stop insisting it’s funny?

It really isn’t funny at all and I do feel like I’m being mocked a bit, before anyone starts I do recognise I’m not but it feels like that. When you’ve come on here and poured your heart out and talked about loss and grief and explained just how important it is I have those photos and people respond with OH HAHAHA ONE DAY YOU WILL LAUGH it’s really annoying to be frank. Sorry, but it is.

I have NO photos with my mum past age … nine or so, none at secondary school, none as a teenager, none at graduation or with her grandchildren or at my wedding. So sue me for that making the ones I do have really quite precious and wanted my children to have that memory - yes, I hope that I’ll be around for many years yet but my own mum did too and I’m already pretty old!

So I’m sorry but it’s not funny and while I recognise it happens and I’m just going to move on I am allowed to have my own feelings about it too.

I can understand being upset. We've had a few photoshoots, and you never know, some might turn out nicely? Logs could photograph really well, your daughter might not have looked at the camera but there might have been shots of her engaging with you and her brother. If the photographer was decent they should have got something. Hope you have a better day tomorrow.

And now you're just being nasty.

OP, I get you and what you’re saying here. I know posters are trying to be helpful but I totally understand why it’s putting your back up and I actually think you’ve done well to not just shut up and sit down. Your feelings are your feelings and that’s justified, no matter how many people tell you otherwise.
I imagine Mother’s Day is still a hard day for you, no matter how many years it’s been and even with your own kids it’s still rubbish to not have your own mum around. And I also really sympathise with that feeling of trying to do something nice and it totally backfires - especially when you’ve spent money you don’t really have on it. I’ve been there and it’s a horrible feeling. All I can say is, kids are little bellends sometimes (often at the worst times!), nothing more, nothing less. Hopefully you can do something nice with them tomorrow so the weekend feels like less of a washout.
On the note of wanting them to have memories of you - I’m sure you already do plenty as you sound like a really good mum, but I always write my kids long heartfelt birthday cards and then keep them - so every year they get what essentially amounts to a love letter from their mum - and when they’re old and I’m gone they’ll be able to look back and see how much I loved them and how special they were. It’s not a replacement for photos (worth a thousand words and all that!) but you could do something similar (if you don’t already, which as I said you probably do!) so you can be sure they’ll have those connections to you no matter what. My mum kept diaries when we were kids - I’ve never actually read them but one day I know I’ll be really glad to have them and be able to ‘hear’ her voice again through them.

So I’m sorry but it’s not funny and while I recognise it happens and I’m just going to move on I am allowed to have my own feelings about it too.

Of course you are, and a lot of people on here should be ashamed of themselves.

But what were you doing while your daughter was cuddling your husband and your son was finding sticks and logs he liked? Because if you were also part of the cuddle or chasing your son or laughing at his big logs or really interacting in any way other than being cross about the logs then I'm sure you'll have some lovely candidates photos.

Was there really no part of it that seemed like everyone was slightly having fun and that was captured by the photographer?

I'm really sorry things didn't go as planned. I expect that, just like me, the approach of Mothering Sunday brings back memories of your own DM. It is clear you miss her dreadfully (as do I).

May I ask, have other things been going tits-up recently? I get the impression this is the straw that broke the camel's back.

You may be surprised when the pics come back. They probably won't be anywhere near as bad as you think. I certainly hope so.

Of course it's not unreasonable to be sad about it. We all have times where we get very invested in something specific and feel inordinately disappointed when it doesn't work out.

OP it’s sad you didn’t get the shoot you wanted.
I find that when things have gone wrong, making a plan helps me feel better.
So what can you do?

An informal shoot on the next sunny day? Take along a friend who can take snaps of you all.
Tell your husband you want him to take photos regularly.
Await the shoot photos and see if the photographer can crop out any stray logs etc. Technology is amazing nowadays.
Decide to try again in two years.

And do you think any extended family members would have some more photos of you and your mum? I’m sure you have tried.

Maybe have a think how you can move on from this and get some more photos of yourself over the next few years!

@DappledThings i / we did try to get some shots with ds but he kept shooting off, waving the stick around so I had to dodge, leaping around, at one point the photographer tried to get him to cuddle me and he barrelled me over, just endless drama. I can’t really think about it without getting upset again tbh.

@TeaView it isn’t like that. I have neither the money or the inclination to arrange another photoshoot. Literally all I can do is accept what’s happened, but as I’ve said I do have feelings about that too.

And I always try and think of how some good can come out of bad. You must get people to take more photos of you from this week onwards. So by the time the kids are older, you will have albums full of lovely photos.

If today’s photo shoot had not been a disaster, maybe you would not have taken any action and you would be looking at many more years of having no photos. Because of today, you are going to insist on more photos of you with your kids and that’s a good thing for the future. So
all is not lost.

I was suggesting you organise a photo shoot in the next few years. Not now. All I was saying is that maybe you could go with your phone and take a friend along and take some nice family pictures in a park quite soon. Is that not possible?