Our Male Model

We spent last Saturday at Shinjuku Gyoen Park and spent the late morning underneath a small grove of cherry blossom trees. We brought a lunch, and a bat & ball to keep Anthon entertained. We didn't on, however, Anthon being the subject of no less than 6 photographers.

For those of you who know Anthon, he's a very outgoing and verbal kid. He's fun loving and because of both his parents incessant picture taking, he is used to hamming it up for the camera. He knows when he's on and can be quite boisterous and entertaining...at least to his parents. We were playing around and I noticed in the periphery one lady who was ducking behind a tree snapping pictures of us. This went on for about five minutes before I made eye contact and she approached us asked if it was OK to take more pictures of our son. Literally 15 minutes later and she's snapping both film and digital pictures, directing on how to position him and how to make him laugh, etc. A bit odd. Then as I'm playing tee ball with Anthon (I hold the ball, Anthon swings the bat, and more often than not hits me in the process), another man comes up and starts taking pictures of Anthon playing ball...another 10 minutes following us around. We had two more groups of people ask to take pictures with Anthon and then two other, more shy photographers, that were more intent on either taking video of Anthon running around or taking pictures of the photographers taking pictures of Anthon. All in the space of two hours.

I certainly hope this doesn't turn Anthon into a Zoolander clone. I would hate to have him ask me, "Have you ever wondered if there was more to life, other than being really, really, ridiculously good looking?"

Here's a picture Shelley took of one of the photographers taking pictures of Anthon.