What Toy Story 5 Taught Me About Family Photography
The truth behind the picture-perfect play photo
We finally went to see Toy Story 5 at the cinema last week. I am not a big cinema fan, but it is an easy way to fill a few hours in a long old summer.
It made me so sad though. There is so much truth in the storyline. I am fairly anti-screens and we are quite limited in what we let the boys have. I know as a result they may seem younger than other children their age, but they still do not sit down and play with toys in an imaginative and creative way like that.
So when we got home, I encouraged them to go get out their toys and play. Queue: Where are my toys mummy, did we throw them out?
Yes. We did. Because they never got played with.
We live in a world where we are constantly trying to declutter and sell things on Vinted, and when he said those words, it hit me right in the chest. Why had I not saved them and put them in a box, even if just for the memories?
Anyway, we got over it, dug out all our cuddly toys, grabbed a robot from the charity shop pile, and they got playing. Imaginatively, creatively. I could not resist capturing it in all its messy, colourful glory, just in case it happened to be the last time.
And no, it was not as picture perfect as it looks. It mainly consisted of the toys fighting and then the boys fighting, and it probably only lasted for ten minutes total.
Posed portraits versus real life memories
It made me think a lot about why we take photos and what we actually want to remember as the years pass. Do we want only posed photos, dressed in our best clothes, smiling sweetly at the camera? Or do we want to remember our children exactly as they are right now? In their favourite worn-out clothes, surrounded by their favourite toys, playing in their messy bedrooms?
For me, I like the balance of the two. There is a time and place for that lovely family portrait where everyone is looking at the camera, but I am pretty positive that it is these other candid family photography moments my kids will look back on when they reach my age.
They will not care if the bed was made or if the room was tidy. They will look at these photos and say, oh remember Smudge and Midnight? The Jellycat bunnies they were given when they were born that went everywhere with them.
Always try to remember that the photos people share online are just a snapshot of their lives, not the whole picture. But sometimes, those unscripted, ten-minute messy snapshots are the ones that hold all the magic.
