I’m not one who plans to take a particular type of photo. Apart from the times I shoot families, I only take the camera with me when I feel like it and I usually don’t think ahead of what I want to photograph. This doesn’t mean I’m not influenced by photos or moments captured by photographers I admire, but it happens unconsciously and I really don’t like the idea of ‘copying’ a particular type of photography.
Despite ALL that, I’m publishing a post about the “smash the cake” session I organized on the occasion of Théo’s first birthday. This is the ultimate example of staged photography, besides the fact that we’ve seen thousands of them… What can I say? The truth is that I really wanted to shoot this session, to create some memories of his first birthday and to watch him gobble down a cake nearly as big as him.
In fact, I really can’t say I prepared much. I used a stars banner I have in the kids’ bedroom and I inflated some of the balloons I had ordered from My Little Day for the birthday party scheduled on the next day.
The thing that really distressed me was the cake. If you know me a little, you’ll know I’m not a great cook (and an even worse pastry chef!). For the past four years, I’ve been cooking a cake a year for Inés’ birthday (before that, no cakes at all). But since the best pastry chef of the area moved in next door a year ago, the annual birthday cake agony is over for me! From now on, I plan to order all my cakes from her. The cake on the pictures was the first one I ordered from Myriam (the second one is the one we ate during the birthday party the next day). I couldn’t like it more. It was exactly what I had imagined for the session and, besides being aesthetically appealing, was delicious! (I almost had a heart attack when I saw Inés and Théo smashing most of it. We got to taste only one layer!).
With a very minimalistic decoration and the cake at the forefront, the only thing left to do was to get Théo into the room, surprise him with the cake, have him eat it with Inés’ help and then let them get dirty – the most dangerous part for the white wall. It was a very funny session and I’m really glad I did it because on the day of the party I just wanted to enjoy every second and not take photos.
I hope you like the photos and, if you have babies, I encourage you to organize a smash-the-cake session and share the experience with me!
Beautiful photos! I love the fact that they are so laid back. 🙂 I did a similar photo shoot with our one year-old but it didn’t involve cake. Just a lot of balloons. Eventually, the only thing she wanted to do, was crawl. Ah, life with a toddler. 🙂