Sarah Jessica Parker has said of the characters in Sex and the City: There’s not just the four of us girls. There’s a fifth, and she’s New York City, and she sparkles.

Here, there’s not just the one subject—a boy, for his first birthday—there are two. The boy and the light.

A photo is a snapshot when light is absent—there, obviously, but not playing an active role. That’s alright sometimes. For when you grab the camera to snap cookie dough on a cheek, candles on a cake.

For me, snapshots become more conscious when that special sort of light plays to my favour by chance—inches from a windowpane on a cloudy day, all diffused and wistful, or a burst of beloved flare that bounces off the water, glowing like some watchful spirit.

Specialness in light can be summoned, too, by calling it on stage: tracks on the kitchen ceiling, for instance, thrown out of focus for just what I wanted—the feel of a vintage wonder wheel, a circus, stars for my birthday boy and his spirit-brother.

I need it today. Show me light that’s conscious and manipulated, or discovered by chance, featured as that sparkling ‘fifth character’. Send some my way, will you?

When he's in his highchair I can't resist: my hands find their way underneath to squeeze his legs, my nose to his nose as he wracks in giggles, squeals in my ear.

Three months premature and just two pounds when he was born, his first shoes are a size three, newborn-sized. He's two weeks shy of his first birthday.

As adorable as they may be, full-term babies are comically enormous to me now, linebackers. Under the cuff of these pants I can feel his calf between forefinger and thumb, his skin chilly there as it always is, skin soft, mine. I could look at this photo in fifty years and have that sensation as clear as today.

Someday he'll be a man, hardened and fuzzy all over, muscled and definitive both in personality and stride. And I'll remember him as he was, lying in humid incubation next to his mirror-brother, waiting for life to begin.

+++++

Baby-feet, lover-torso, sisters holding hands. Show us piecemeal photography today, will you?

This is something to own, to make clear: the day we went to Ross Farm I took 300 pictures in two hours.

I’m a ruthless deleter, and proud of it—the final tally was 60 barely acceptable shots, 12 flickrable.

Early on the learning curve my goal was to improve my shooting ratio—to be happy with one in five shots instead of one in twenty (or thirty, or forty). Admirable, sure.

But then I had kids.

And then there were the mid-frame tackles and the naked streaking and the radioactive snot (we won a Boogitzer for the above, and now we're rich) and the blur, the constant, unintentional, tasmanian-devil blur.

So now I must fess up to worshipping the continuous shutter, to being in the market for extra storage, to being shamelessly, unapologetically devoted to the Why Take One Frame When You Can Take Fifteen?  school of photographic thought. To be creatively fulfilled (and not demoralized) simply by bettering my odds.

That’s my truth. What’s yours?

What's exploded in your life that’s flipped your philosophy, changed how you take pictures?

I stood there for a solid five minutes trying to find his eyes. No luck.

And he stood there contemplating me, his chum decidedly unimpressed. It was as if I'd asked to take his picture and he'd sheepishly replied, "Meh."

(ba-dum-dum.)

Have you ever had one of those lovely moments in which you ask permission without speaking, and some momentarily peaceful, still, contented beast cooperates?

He watches a fairground ride and I wonder: what's he thinking?

Sure, they just lie there in carseat or on floor, less photographically diverse than hopping and squishing and squealing toddlers. But OH! My... the wonder that awaits a patient soul. This Easter Monday, show us your favourite baby-absorbing-world captures - with all the cereal-encrusted cheeks and gummy grins.

Because nothing quite says peace and hope like cheeks like those.