Usually, it’s a gradual transition, you go from zero kids to one kid to two. Gives you time to get used to the havoc. But sometimes, God blesses you with twins, going from zero to two (or rather zero to hundred) in a split of a second. You can either get buried under the mess or… or transform your kids lives into a roller coaster of impossible scenarios. This is exactly what Guy Vainer did when he got two adorable kids.
DIYP got Guy on the line to asked him what the duck?
“The two most common questions that I get are “How?” and “Why?”. I will explain the “how” in a bit, the “why” is easy. As a father, I want the best for my kids, and as a photographer, I will do all I can to make them the best pictures possible. Now, the plan is to continue until we ran out of ideas, and with all the pictures I will make a special photo album.
As all parents, I take a lot of pictures with my mobile phone, only when the twins were 3 or 4 months old I took out my DSLR. The first photo in this album, was “Queen”. I am a huge fan of the group. After I posted the photo and we got a lot of great responses we took the pictures “taking over the world” and “playing chess”. From there we got more great responses and we started to plan more pictures. Now we have a notebook full of ideas and sketches, we are waiting that some customs and props will arrive in the mail.
We asked Guy how he motivated the kids and how hard is it to get them to play along
We started the project when the twins were six months old. As you can imagine, they were not old enough to understand or to corporate. So we needed to find clever ways to help them get into pose:
- We have a toy train that makes blipping lights and a lot of noises, both I and my wife hate this toy, but it makes the twins look where ever we want them to.
- Sometimes we use a phone on the camera (see photo below) and that makes them look at the camera.
- If we want to twins to reach out, we put toys in front of them.
- When we need them to hold something in the picture, we cut and give them a cardboard model, and then replace the cardboard in post.
- A lot of the pictures are taken when they were too young to stand by themselves, so we had to hold them standing (they were 9-10 months old and could only lean on furniture). Again, we removed our “helping hands” in post.
When asked about cooperation from Dalit, his wife, Guy tells that that
I don’t really know how she tolerates me and my crazy ideas. Seriously though, my wife, or should I say, my amazing wife is an inseparable part of this project. She is present in every step of the way. Starting with concept and planning, taking care of the safety during the shoot, taking the pictures while I hold the kids, making them look where we need them to look or by directing and acting. And finally, she helps with the editing and reviewing. Once I edit a photo, she always has a new perspective on the photo, giving me great advice how to make it even better.
Guy adds that he is getting warm reactions. A lot of times people ask how it’s was done, I always try to explain and post behind the scenes photos in the comments. That said, there is always that one who don’t understand that all photos go through photoshop and threatens to call child services.
If you want to see some of the work that goes into creating this wonderful series, here are some BTS:
You can see more of Guy’s “Help me! My father is a photographer” by following the project’s Facebook album.
