On Saturday, July 28th 2007, some family and friends helped me to celebrate the 9th birthday of my youngest son Christian Lee Watkins (A.K.A My Buddy). Each day that God gives us is a blessing and I thank God for the 9 years that Christian has been on this earth.
If you know Christian at all then you’re familiar with the fact that he’s a busy body. He loves to joke, laugh, cut up with his brother BJ as well as get into trouble. Unfortunately, he inherited the mischievous gene from me… because if truth be told.. I was a LOT WORSE than he while growing up. . which is how I got the name “Ivan the Terrible” anywayyyyyyyy it was a CONSPIRACY against me…
Christian’s birthday party was held at the AMF bowling lanes in Durham, NC at 3:00 p.m. We had a blast but the downside was that we had so many children that there was no such thing as rest. As far as trying to photograph everyone… I wasn’t able to. There were so many kids running around (16 to be exact) and that made trying to photograph all of them plus the guests a daunting task. In a nutshell, it was like trying to shoot ants with a bb gun. As soon as you get them in your sites… they’re gone…… Therefore, I wasn’t able to capture everyone that attended the party.. for a while I was stuck like a deer in headlights not knowing which way to go.
Moving on to the pictures…….
I told Christian that I wanted a special picture of him turning 9 years of age because it would be my way of remembering his birthday.
We setup the lights and this is the picture that he allowed me to capture of him proudly holding his bowling pin. Note: some of the names can hardly be seen because Aleah tried to erase them. There’s nothing worse than a woman’s scorn….. I guess it starts when they are young. (yes, I know some of you are going to get me for saying that but I’m used to being GOT)
Here is a shot of his candle burning……
And of course the picture of him blowing out the flame.
If you’ve been around me for any length of time then you will find that one thing I’m serious about is trying to capture the details of whatever event I’m attending. Beauty can be found in the most common overlooked places. For example.. in a bowling alley we are used to seeing bowling balls on the racks and we pay them no attention. However, this is how they look to my eye.
The bowling game went on for 1 hour 30 minutes YES!!!! THAT WAS ONE GAME… 16 children playing ONE game. . . let me calm down… Once the game was over, everyone gathered around the birthday table and took turns signing Christian’s bowling pin.
Here is a picture of Calise signing Christian’s bowling pin. She is one of Aleah’s running buddies from church.
As you can probably imagine there was a bunch of chaos around the lanes. However, in the midst of all the children running around there were also some interesting things taking place. If you’ve every bowled then you know that one of the hardest things to knock down is a split. Keeping that in mind… Christian’s cousin, Chandler, walked up to me and said “I know how to do a split.” Once I saw her do the split I just had to capture it and therefore I present to you what I call “THE SPLIT-ER”. The original, “Normal”, photo can be found in the photo gallery.
One person that stays on Christian’s HIT list is Devin Johnson. He is Brent’s running buddy here on my street. At any point in time you may hear this…. “Christian if you don’t leave me alone I’m going to punch you …….. in your jaw……… arrrrggghhhhh (frustrated sound)!” “MR. WATKINS WOULD YOU PLEASE TELL CHRISTIAN TO LEAVE ME ALONE?!”
Well, here is a picture of Devin getting ready to pick off some pins.
And last but definitely not least here is a candid / paparazzi style shot of Christian checking out his energy drink.
Answer this question for me . . . have you ever seen a ballerina strike a pose after rolling the ball? Well if you want to see it then take a few moments and view the rest of photographs that were captured at Christian’s birthday celebration.