Parents who adore their newly born babies want to chronicle their children’s early years through photos and videos. It is a normal thing parents do, particularly for their first born, they get so excited, and don’t mind the time and effort to come up with amazing photos and videos. There are many such parents who even create cute backdrops and use different motifs and color combinations to make the pictures really interesting, you notice them in social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc.
Designer Benson Chou and his wife Michelle, participated in this social media tradition, but exclaims that he may “have gone too far” in how elaborate the photos were. The couple produced 52 “movie posters” of their son’s first 52 weeks, featuring different scenes using only everyday props they had on hand. “It all started with a Buzz Lightyear onesie,” Benson recalls. It basically was to show appreciation for a gift, and the couple thought it would be nice to share a photo of their 2-month old son, Zoltan (aka Bonbon) wearing the outfit. “Then we thought if we were gonna take a photo anyway, instead of using the floor or our bed, why not set up a clean backdrop, we might as well…use earbuds as stars, scarves as planets, drag the thermometer across the canvas like a shooting star, and you know, while we were at it, Photoshop the photo and turn it into a poster.”
And that’s how the new and interesting project came about, surely it was not going to end there. They committed to taking new and different photos every weekend until he turned one. Quite daunting, so they decided to make parameters for the project to avoid giving up halfway through. Definitely they agreed that the project should not add stress to their lives. “It should be fun and off of our minds until the day of the shoot,” Benson explained. “ So we tendered to just try to come up with a theme on the day of the shoot or the day before. And that was why you’ll see lots of posters were drawn from current events.”
The second rule was to make their shots as creative as possible, they tried using practical effects to cut down on the post-production time. “It was also way more fun making a stereo speaker using cast iron lids and lego pieces than just throwing one in with Photoshop,” he said.
They also agreed to a strict time limit of 30 minutes per shoot so things won’t get out of hand and use up the whole day. Well they were successful 99% of the time, Benson jokingly said “ Usually it was Zoltan’s fault when we had to break this rule.” Ya right, blame it on the kid.
When the project was done, the couple commemorated their hard work by compiling the images into a hardbound book. “It was certainly one of my most enjoyable projects,” Chou writes. But, he says, “ Sorry my second kid, you might not get the same treatment. Daddy’s kinda lazy.” Luckily Zoltan was first born…
