My Mom with My Daughter (Posterized Polaroid)

My Mom with My Daughter (Posterized Polaroid), a photo by randubnick on Flickr.

My mother hated having her picture taken, so I have very few pictures of her taken with me as a child. If there were pictures to be taken, she was more likely to be holding the camera! But today I found some snapshots of my mother with my daughter, taken in Pueblo, Colorado. I had moved back home with my baby girl while my husband was in South Carolina for basic training for the National Guard (having won the draft lottery). It was hard to see the up-side of this at the time, but now I know it was an opportunity for me to spend time with my mom and the rest of my family in Pueblo. And it was a chance for her to enjoy her first grandchild. It dawned on me today that she seemed more than willing to have her picture taken holding her grandchild; maybe time had taught her the value of photographs! When this adventure was over and we were leaving Pueblo again, my mom cried and said she had forgotten how easy it is to fall in love with a baby. So the photo I found today was is a Polaroid (one of many), and it is streaked, scratched, and fading! I decided to rescue it, and then transform it. I scanned it into the computer, and then used iPhoto to get rid of the worst of the scratches and marks on both faces. (I left the rest of the marks alone, thinking they might make the posterizing effect more interesting.) Then I opened the image in Painter. I used digital pastel and some cut-and-paste to cover up some cars visible through the window. Then I used selective posterizing and color overlays, using the streaks of the fading Polaroid to suggest the composition. So here's to my mom, on Mother's Day. If your mom is still with you, I hope you take a picture. And if you are a mom yourself, I hope that if someone wants to take your picture, you will smile and say yes. You are making memories for your kids.