My Favorite Photograph

As part of the 4th Edition of the “I Smile for the Camera” Carnival hosted at footnoteMaven’s Shades of the Departed online publication, participants must pick a favorite photograph and explain why it is so

The title of this has to have a disclaimer.  It was a lot harder than I thought it would be to pick out one photograph as my favorite.  So for the record the one below is my favorite right now (10:00 pm, 10 August 2008).  Even after saying that I am including the 2nd place picture and will post several others that were considered in the near future.

My favorite picture

Taken August 27, 2004 in El Reno, OK at my son Rick’s wedding. It was be an “eye-catching” picture just from the content, but the expression on my daughter’s face in the background makes it priceless.  This was the first wedding we had had in the family in thirteen years.  It was in a beautiful, old Catholic church with an old, Irish priest presiding.  Perhaps the most memorable part of the wedding experience was at the rehearsal when the priest said, (and I can’t reproduce the Irish brogue) “No matter what happens during the service tomorrow at the end of it you will be married. If you fall flat on your face as you walk down the aisle, just kiss the floor, say it was and act of contrition and get up and walk on.”  Fortunately, no one fell on their face and most everything went as planned.  It was afterward that I caught this picture.  For those of you who can’t figure out what’s going on, it really is very innocent and they are newly married.  The train of Erin’s wedding gown was made to hook up inside the skirt and her new husband Rick was the only way who knew how to fix it.  The look of consternation on my daughter’s face is purely a coincidence that the camera just happened to catch.

A very, very close second

I don’t know if this fits in the rules since this is actually two pictures. But they have always been an inseparable pair in our family.  They are a before school shot on the left and an after school shot on the right of me and my brother, (he’s the tall one, I’m the cute one) taken in the Philippines in 1948.  It has always been one of my favorites and a standard shot in our family to represent the way we were.  My mother worked very hard to make sure we were always neatly dressed no matter what the occasion, and yet it never seemed to fail that as soon as we were out the door, all of her hard work was for naught.