Photographing Dad and Mom

So most of you who knows me personally would probably know that I have recently gotten back to snapping shots of my everyday life. Things that we don't normally see or wouldn't have paid much attention to unless from a forced perspective. Okay, so maybe I do take too many photos of my food. Then again, one can argue that food is a large part of culture and livelihood. BUT, that's not the point of this post.

Brought home my lights and brolly to prepare from tomorrow's photoshoot and decided to test it out on mom just to get a better feel of the equipment. It is, after all, some fresh equipment that I've yet to really field test.

Okay, so I might need to work on my framing a little bit more, but it's truly just a light test, to see if it'll really work and shit. As usual, I throw the photos onto lightroom to take a closer look at the shots, make sure nothing's bad or off focus. I certainly didn't see them (camera's awesome as always). What I saw, instead...

I saw wrinkles breaking out from any possible fold on her skin.
I saw the imbalance in eye size due to the surgery done for her bifocal cornea operation thingy.
I saw the liver spots on her face where the cheekbones are.
I saw the slightly jutting jawline that popped out with her new set of dentures that never fit (I think it's her 5th or 6th set now. Dad says even if a deity bestows a fresh set for her, she will still not like it)

It got me thinking about how much she has aged. And it is an interesting feeling for me because all these while, we kept saying that my mom who's 60-ish (shit I can't remember her exact age) probably still looks 40-ish. Youthful energy!!! And then reality hits when I zoom in and see all those signs of time spent taking care of the family, hitting a loan shark runner with a metal pole (true story), making awesome tea and coffee, being a "professional" gambler and many more. Damn she's old!

It's the same when I took a photo for Dad. He was complaining the first photo I took for him wasn't decent looking. Well, he was topless and I was just taking a photo for his google account set up following his new RedMi phone.

And the exact same thing! Okay, Dad's photo wasn't as surprising to me. His body had already shrunk by some bit, and I've been trying to convince him to shave his head instead of holding on to that set of thin, grey hair left at the back. Balding men look older than bald men, don't you think?

Anyways, I'm really glad I got that new camera. With a smaller camera, I'm so much less reluctant to take it out and just randomly snap some shots. Forget about the shutter count and make the photos count.