Turning the tables

When you're always the person behind the camera, there tend to be few photos of you in front of it. That's certainly the case for my partner John Denniston, a professional photographer, whose image seldom pops up in family albums because he has always been the one snapping away as we go about our activities. (He does not do posed photos; it's candid only, so you never know what state he'll catch you in -- a source of constant fear for my mother.) At Saturday's picnic in West Vancouver, our niece Aya turned the tables on him. First she shot him as he took a break from photographing her daughter Emi on the swings. Camera still in hand, John was pushing Emi's swing to keep his little subject happy. Then as we headed back to Vancouver in two separate cars, Aya caught him unawares when her family's car pulled up beside ours. "On the way back we kept driving next to each other and we tried hard to catch your attention but Uncle John seemed to be having some very serious thoughts, so we decided to pull a JD on you!" Aya wrote when she sent us the resulting photos.

John having serious thoughts on the way home.

John keeping Emi's swing going.