Do You Love or Dread Family Portraits?

Granted, the Almighty is a mite peeved with those photographers who use His Son’s name in vain the first time they meet appearance-challenged Little Johnny. (“Marlboro doesn’t have enough filters to make THIS kid look good! Maybe if I tie a porkchop around his neck, the shutter will open.”)

Even worse than the ordeal of getting a group picture made is the stressful experience of deciding whether to purchase prints a la carte or spring for the full package.

It’s heartrending to think about glossy photos of your loved ones being nonchalantly shredded. And I’ve heard the studios are upping the ante. (“No hard feelings. For each sheet you reject, we will also uproot one rain forest tree and tell an Afghan orphan his pet lamb is being moved to a farm upstate…”)

I realize that the charmed people whose life is One Big Christmas Letter (“While in Tahiti to get our colonoscopies – photos included – and decide whether to give Suzy that island or Harvard University as a wedding gift…”) will look down upon me for settling for shortcuts. They’ll doubtless pontificate something such as “Well, if it really meant anything to him, he would make time to get a good portrait.”

Honestly, I do regret that photos of me, my brother and our parents all together are rare or nonexistent; but I won’t apologize for being realistic about family portraits going forward.

I wouldn’t sleep any better thinking that someday my great-great grandchildren will fight over a framed image of ancestors struggling to look comfortable for two seconds.

“Hmph. You can have this one, sis. But dibs on the picture of the wooly mammoth!”

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”