Mother and Child Portrait

I was on assignment in New Jersey. It was Thanksgiving Day and I was shooting at a public dinner for the "less fortunate." It wasn't specifically for homeless people, but there were homeless there. It was also for people who maybe couldn't afford a big Thanksgiving meal, or didn't have the knowledge or time to cook one, or maybe didn't have anyone to spend the holiday with. It was held in a church and lasted for about 6 hours. People were welcome to come at any time, stay as long as they wanted, and eat until they couldn't eat any more. There was even some entertainment of church groups singing.

I actually had fun there talking with different people and took a variety of different pictures, some for the assignment and some for myself. I even had time to sneak a little of the food. I noticed this one lady with her boy at a table and tried to talk to them, but didn't have much luck. I guess they either didn't speak English or didn't really want to talk. I at least got out of them that she was the mother to the little boy. I thought she looked old enough to be the Grandmother, probably because of her body language. She sure didn't appear to have much energy. After watching the boy for a while, I figured she was just exhausted from trying to keep up with him all day long, every day.

The boy did what most boys his age do as soon as he finished eating. He started getting fidgety, then sliding down his chair, then crawling around under the table, then when told to come out, went running around the table and then around the entire room. I watched as he did all this and took a few photos of him running around. When I looked at the mother, she seemed sort of defeated, like she either did not have the energy to chase after the boy or didn't know how to control him. I guess I felt a little sorry for her. I wanted to help her out, but I didn't want to step into territory where I shouldn't have been stepping.

My solution was to see if I could get the kid to stop long enough to pose for a picture with his mother. That would calm him down for a minute and get him close enough to her so she could hang on to him and not let him run around anymore (if she wanted). I caught the boy as he went screaming by the table. I kind of pointed and used gestures to show him that I wanted him to go over to his mother so I could take their picture together. He appeared to agree to it and she seemed grateful for the opportunity also. This is the one and only shot I took of them because she let go of him and he took off to run around some more.

Feel free to comment and leave your opinion about it.

It was taken with a Nikon D70 at a focal length of 42mm because I was right next to them. I used a side mounted flash with the shutter speed of 1/60 of a second and aperture was f/4 because I wasn't interested in having a focused background beyond my subject.