When you share your living space—that is, your life—with another person, every time you enter a room you will be met with signs of her presence. A light left on in an empty room. The way the sheets on both sides of the bed are rumpled. A sweater that didn't look good today. These things are trivial, they mean so little when you happen upon them. You may even find them annoying. Yet while this person is away it is the absence of these signs that will really drive home the reality of your solitude.

I love this picture. I think it's my favorite from the entire session we did for Juliette's dad. I love it for a lot of reasons. I love it for technical reasons: the lighting, the textures, the selective focus. I love it because it looks like what Jason looks like right now. And not just the way his features look, but his personality, too—the way he's fiddling with his shirt, belying the calm, almost tired look on his face. It's a truthful picture in many ways.

But it's funny how pictures can lie, even when they're telling another kind of truth. When I look at this picture, it looks like a quiet moment. There's a serenity to it, a peacefulness. It's in the gesture and the light, the way darkness brushes over half his face. And that's not what that shoot was actually like.

In reality, Jason had his normal morning energy. He was playful and silly, full of smiles and constantly moving, even when he was sitting still. In order to keep him engaged enough to actually get his picture I had to wheedle and bribe and tickle and make faces.

And yet, it's funny how pictures can tell the truth, even when they're lying. Because, as I said, the way he looks in this picture, that's him, too. It may not have been him on that morning, but it is in him, and for the split-second of this photograph, that's what he showed me.

All this, and more, is why I love photography. And parenting.

The shutter on my medium format camera (a Bronica ETRS) sticks sometimes. Fortunately, there's a little indicator light in the viewfinder that blinks when the shutter has properly actuated, and when it doesn't blink I just flip the double exposure switch and reshoot the same frame. Unfortunately, when I don't see the blinking light I'm never sure whether it didn't actually blink or if I just missed it. So I end up with a lot of unintentional double (or triple or quadruple) exposures. This one just happened to work out well.

This weekend, Juliette and I bribed Jason to take some nice pictures for his Aba (that's what we call Juliette's dad). It may not be obvious from this shot, but he was actually very cooperative.

Jason can be a pretty good listener when he wants to be. When we're at an Easter party at our friends' house and it's time to learn how to do a new craft, he's all ears. When it's time for him to go to sleep, not so much.

This is what happens when Jason is bored while we're waiting for a table at a restaurant and he sees me take out the camera. Fortunately, Eva didn't mind at all.

"You know, one thing that I don't love about a lot of the pictures you've been taking of Eva is that she's got her pacifier in her mouth in almost every one."

"Well, yeah. She has it in her mouth in the pictures because that's what she looks like right now. She just has it in most of the time."

"Maybe we need to work on that."

"Yeah, I guess we do."

Playing in that Exersaucer is hard work—sometimes you need to take a little break and put your head down.

I sure hope the next place we live—wherever and whenever that might be—gets light like this in the mornings.

Popcorn stains on his lap (we had just gotten out of a movie), scuffed up knees, midriff bared by his raised arms, stern visage. Yep, if he says he's Superman, it's good enough for me. (The curl on his forehead, now that's just the icing on the cake.)