Smile for the Camera-Cheek Family Portrait

I look forward to the  Smile-for-the-camera Carnivals  because of

 the challenge of selecting just the right picture(s) for the category. I regret that time constraints have made me miss the last few. This time it really was easy and I didn’t have to look very deep into the family archives. In fact the picture was as close as the top of the page.  My header picture, a family portrait of my great grandfather Robert Bruce Cheek’s family takin in Mangum, Oklahoma Territory, around 1903. There are many more pictures in my treasury that would fit, but I have always been fascinated by the sartorial contrasts in this family portrait.  

 

Cheek Family Portrait-ca1903

The patriarch is wearing an obviously well-worn standard suit of the era. The mother, Carrie Savanah Adams Cheek, obviously took a little more time to get ready for the photographer, what doesn’t show with her hands folded across her lap, is the presence of the final member of the family, Roy Bruce,  who will be born later in the year.  The stars are obviously big brother, Joseph Marion (my grandfather) and big sister, Bertie Columbia.  They are definitely stylin’. The other boys are not too impressed with the whole process and would obviously prefer to be somewhere else.  I really like the haphazard buttoning of the jacket on my great uncle Robert Luther. Unfortunately a few years later he would be killed in France in “the war to end all wars.”  The best dressed of all may be the doll held by Annabelle, but I just couldn’t enlarge enough to be sure.

 

 I am eagerly anticipating the next carnival.

 

Smile for the Camera: Crowning Glory

The last Smile-for-the-camera Carnival was impossible because any attempt to choose a favorite picture had to leave too many out and could only be true for the picture selected at that time and place. Five minutes later, I probably would have changed my mind. The Crowning Glory theme was a lot easier because it gave me some boundaries that I had to observe, but I was pretty sure what my final selection would be before I even started looking. Still there was that part of the instructions that said, “Don’t limit yourself to just hair fashion through the ages, got a great photograph of a hat, helmet, bonnet, or some other interesting headgear? Share!” That opened up lots of possibilities, so rather than limit myself to one, I decided to share some of the great pictures that fell into the “also ran” category.

The first three are pictures of my wife’s mother, her little sister, and my wife.

 The next group includes my son Rick as Aslan, my son John with really pretty hair, and son Mark with his best Jesus look.

Next in the classic headgear category are my great, great, great grandmother Dicey Mitchell Ball (the camera didn’t catch her with her eyes closed, she was blind), my mother with her big brother, and my wife’s mother with her big hat.

 

In the next group are another shot of me and my big brother (obviously no longer in the Philippines), a shot of my wife on the way to do a little shopping, and one of my wife’s cousins with the cutest little hat.

 

 The final group displays the glories of my son Bob, doing his Johnny Appleseed impression, and my three grand daughters looking oh so cute in their pink trucker hats (gifts from their uncle John who got cut out of the picture because he is not nearly as cute as they are.)

The runner up picture is another shot of Emma and Eliza who are very excited about their wonderful hair.(I still can’t believe their friend was patient enough to braid all the girls hair that day).

The winner is the shot of three brothers-Matt, John, and Bob-sans hair. A few years ago their sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. An experienced friend advised her that it is a lot less traumatic to just go ahead and cut your hair off rather than waiting for it to fall out.  When her brothers found out, the told her to let them know when she was going to shave her head and they would join her. This picture is the result-the Crowning Glory of “philadelphia.” 

 

Of course following that, she got to wear a wig and they just had to wait until it grew out. Just in case you were wondering the middle brother is the same one with all the beautiful curls up in group two. 

This carnival has truly been a joy to participate in and believe me there were many more pictures that didn’t quite make the final groups.  I am eagerly anticipating the next carnival.

 

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.