A picture is worth a thousand words!

I always find it interesting when I come across various Adoption Profile pictures.  The prospective parents varied styles and my reaction to them.  I don’t know that I’d ever paid much attention before starting our journey but our agency was very concise with what we needed for ours.  One of which was the expectant mom should see your faces so no long shots and no selfies.

Other things seemed like a no brainer, like what do you want to convey in your pictures about your life.  While writing our letter I agonized over how bad some of our pictures were of things we’d have loved to put in, like Don playing the drums on stage, but poor lighting and distance didn't accurately describe him.  So I instead chose better pictures and tried to put our likes into the websites.

 I try to put myself in the Expectant mom’s shoes of envisioning what her child’s life will be like. So let’s take a look at some of the more recent photos I've seen around the adoption sites.

They’re sitting in a dark bar with neon lights with their significant other with the top of the wine bottle in the foreground between them.   What this conveys upon first glance to me is we probably drink and drive.  Now that isn't to say that’s the case (they certainly could be walking, taking a cab or have a DD) but it isn't want you’d want your first impression to be, right?  The same is true of sitting in the grass at the park with full wine glasses.  That says we’ll be drinking in the park while our child is playing.  True? No, I’m sure it isn't but again in my opinion and from what I've read you should probably leave alcohol out of your first impression picture. The other is the long shots and time and date stamped photos from years ago. Now maybe you've been waiting years but if so try to update that first impression picture to something more recent or at least crop the date stamp out.  We all have those pictures and they work great on your online profile but may be sending the wrong message as your first impression. 

I read the dos and don’ts post of a guest blogger who creates Letters for prospective parents and while she doesn't specify no alcohol in photos I’d think she’d try to sway her clients away from it (maybe not, I am speculating).  One thing she does mention is no sunglasses, well in a lot of our outdoor supporting pictures I/we are wearing sunglasses.  Simply put I wear glasses that get very dark outside, even in the shade on a bright day. It made our photo shoot extremely difficult actually and so some pictures we just had Don put his sunglasses on.

Most first impression pictures follow the eyes open and smile approach.  Even in a lot of the pictures I've seen and mentioned everyone is looking and smiling it’s just the “extras” that made me think to write this because I haven't seen it mentioned before.  I know when we started this journey we didn't have very many pictures of us together and we've tried to make sure we take some now. That said we chose additional pictures we liked that may not have been the best pictures but they said who we are. 

As it’s said “A picture is worth a thousand words!” and “The eyes are the windows to the soul.”

A favorite selfie from a baseball game we were at