I photographed someone famous this week, and I was given three minutes to do it.
It was supposed to be a portrait, except she’d be talking the entire time. The brief was normal, composed, elegant, which is a funny set of instructions, because nobody on earth looks normal while they’re talking, let alone elegant.
Three minutes, and a great many facial muscles to overpower. So I did what you do. I sprayed and prayed.
And then one frame went by, and I felt it. I didn't see it. Felt it. A gasp and a YES shouted somewhere behind my forehead, before my eyes had confirmed a single thing.
At midnight, completely wrecked from the day, I went back through the frames, hunting for the nugget of gold I was pretty sure was in there.
It was there. The relief was enormous.
Here’s why I’m telling you this. That gasp is not a professional skill. It’s a body doing what bodies do when something is right. Mine happens to be trained on a stranger’s face mid-sentence.
Yours is probably trained on a kid. The face they make right before they cry. The way they look asleep. The light on the kitchen wall at four o'clock, with somebody small standing in it. The way he won’t leave the beach when it’s time to go, but you let him stay a minute longer because the light is doing something rad and you want it clicked into record.
It’s the same instrument. Learning to play it is where we’re going to start.
Confession: sometimes you go back at midnight, and the perfect frame you hoped for isn’t there. Bad exposure, motion blur, flash error, an ISO still set from a completely different scenario an hour earlier. The moment was real, the feeling was real, and it was lost to a number you forgot to change.
I shoot about 155,000 frames a year. It still happens to me.
So I front-load everything I can control. Settings checked before she walks in, based on how fast she might be moving. Background picked, tested. I know where the light is falling before I know what her face is doing. Then I stop thinking about any of it and watch. I set the conditions, and the magic usually shows up.
I keep shooting like the gasp is trustworthy. Because it is.
I’ve been telling you to trust the gasp since No. 0006. I’ve been posting my six pics as they reveal themselves to me each week.
This week I stopped waiting for the six pics to find me and went and made them instead.
And next week, I invite you to do the same.
My August Six
For the last month I’ve been running a trial on myself. The same six assignments I’m about to hand you! Not as a demonstration. As a person with three kids and a phone, in the middle of a standard (but extraordinary, because life is!) August.
Here’s what I got. Six photographs, one per prompt, no do-overs.
The gasp. A mint chip cone, drippy and unreasonably good. A very hot day, with very cold ice cream, and the kids slurping their drips behind me. Mint chip is my favorite flavor and this one from Big Olaf sings.
Someone mid-jump. My two-year-old, jumping like a hyena, not that she can even say “hyena.” Unrelated: Can hyenas jump?
The last good beach light. Long Beach, Sag Harbor, 7:52pm.
Shoes by the door. As they were left. Do not straighten.
You. In the picture. Yesterday, first thing, nowhere near camera-ready. The less camera-ready, the better.
The theater camp goodbye. Colette and her brother outside the theater where they spent all summer being other people. Next roles: Third Grader and First Grader.
None of these took more than a minute. Two of them happened while I was doing something else entirely. The point isn't that they're good photographs, although I like them. The point is that they exist, and they wouldn't have if nobody had told me to look. Well, I told me to look. And it worked out!
An Experiment: The Six. Monthly Photo Prompts for Parents
I’ve been plotting.
If I’ve found this much meaning in setting the stage for my own future memories, on purpose, in advance, then you might too. Especially if you’re the one in your house holding the phone.
So here’s the new thing.
What it is: six photo prompts a month. Specific scenes from a real month of parenting, each with the pro note on how to actually catch it. Not vibes. Not vague word salad like “capture the moment.” Not “find something blue.”
Who it’s for: the people raising kids. Not aspiring professionals, not anyone building a portfolio. Whoever in your house ends up making the family record: you, your partner, the auntie who visits on Sundays, the au pair, the person who does pickup. If that’s you, this was built for you.
When it arrives: the first Monday of every month. They take about a minute each. Do one, do two, or do nothing and just read along.
Here’s the plan. September is the test run, and it’s free for everybody. The first prompt is below, right now. The other five land on Labor Day, which happens to be the first Monday of September, so we’re already on schedule.
Starting in October, The Six becomes a perk for paid subscribers, with one prompt always free for everyone. By then I’ll have a whole month of these to show you, made by more people than just me.
Let’s find out if this is as fun as I think it is.
September’s Six: Try it!
Here’s one of September’s prompts so you can see the shape of it:
THE 4 O’CLOCK WALL. The light has moved. It is not where it was in July, and it will not be there in November. Find the wall (or a bit of floor!) in your house that glows around four now, and shoot only that. Are there any cool shadows? Look across from where windows are. No people required.
Why: you’re learning your own house. Once you know where the good light lives at four, you’ll start standing your kid in front of it without thinking about it.
That's one of six. The other five land Monday.
Can I See Yours?
Here’s the part where you come in, and I mean that literally, because this doesn’t work if it’s just me.
The easy way in: scroll your August photos right now. Don’t take anything new.
I would bet a pricey-but-perfect Sagaponack General iced coffee that you already took one of these six without anybody asking you to. The shoes by the door. The kid mid-air. The one where the light was doing something and you stopped walking.
Post a note and tag me, and tell me which prompt it is. Or send me a DM! That’s it. One photo, one line.
The other way in: start fresh on September first, with the wall. Then keep going, and post them as you get them.
I’m going to feature what you send. Not the technically-best ones, because that’s not what this is.
The ones that made somebody stop scrolling and go oh. Yours, next to mine, next to a stranger’s, all six of us having looked at the same prompt and found completely different things.
That’s the part I’m actually curious about. I already know what I see. I want to know what you see.
The Weekly Ooh: Your Senior Year, Assembled
After I posted about bottling an era, I got a ton of texts about how songs were the most powerful time machine, dropping you back into places you’d long left. Or next to a person you haven't seen in twenty years.
So I took to IG and asked what was playing during your senior year of high school.
I cannot overstate the joy I felt as you all commented with EPIC musical GEMS that I’d forgotten about and felt a rush of delight to rediscover.
You answered with everything from The Roots to a truly unhinged amount of nineties hard-guitar riffs. Here’s the playlist below. Put it on and see where it takes you. I’ve had it on in my car all week, and I’ve been so pumped up, I can’t even tell you. Shuffle and LIVEEEE.
A playlist can hold an entire era. This one holds several at once, which is a strange and incredibly lovely thing to have built together! My girlies (and my non-girlies, who need a name, please advise) have impeccable taste.
Thank you to everyone for helping! Living for this soundtrack. It’s 116 ways to merge my old life with this one, and every version in between. 8 hours and two minutes!
Look what we made in two weeks with one question about high school. Now imagine what we can do with photographs!
This post contains affiliate links via ShopMy and Amazon. If you buy through them, it costs you nothing and occasionally buys me a latte!
Helpful Tools for The September Six
First and foremost: a good idea. Think of one thing that was only true of your kid THIS summer. Then go shoot it before it isn’t.
For you-in-the-picture: a pocket tripod with a cute little Bluetooth remote. I own this. I keep it in my (large!) tote bag. Twenty dollars is what stands between you and being in your family’s photo record.
The stick-it-to-a-window influencer fave, the Octobuddy! You too can look like a YouTuber. Smash that subscribe button!
For the shoes and the goodbye: Nothing. These two require zero equipment, which is the point.
Ready to print some faves? Start with a smattering of these on the coffee table. Rotate them out on the season change. I’ve been doing this for years and it’s SO FUN. The stakes are also low… coffee spills or the baby eats one (ask me how I know) and it’s easily replaced.
Links I Texted this week
OK, not a Substack, but did you know Olivia Rodrigo started her own Lilith Fair? In light of our millennial masterpiece playlist, this news should get TOP BILLING!
Dude. Molly Sims’ piece this week was the one I sent to three people. For summer parents who are equal parts joyful and eye-twitchingly overstimulated, read this right away.
I’m a happy paying subscriber of Art Direction by Zoë Yasmin. This week, she wrote about how most alive work has an unexpected twist, and how you may not have found your creative medium yet. What a lovely shame-removing thought for anyone longing to break free from whatever assumptions they’re making, creatively.
The Seventh Pic: Meme of the Week
Go let your ears deliver you a memory. Then describe it to me, because I want to know where you landed.
And in September, we start making memories on purpose, together, out in the open.
Six prompts, one minute each, and the only thing you have to bring is the thing you already have (your phone!). In October The Six becomes a paid perk, and by then I’ll be able to show you what a whole month of this looks like when it’s made by more than one person.
Whether a song or a photo, when your ooh instinct says yes to something, trust it. Mine has been right more often than my eyes have.
Send this to someone who NEEDS this playlist in their car this week.
hugs!!
Ana
Favorite article of the week. 10/10 !!
Well…why shouldn’t I buy myself flowers? (August phone photo)