The 3x3x3 rule for documenting family
My two-year-old son recently climbed on top of a (stationary) ATV and grabbed the handlebars like he knew what to do and was having the best time. Absolutely ruining it, his dad and I were trying to get his attention from two different angles (“Look this way!”) to take pictures.
Instead of connecting with him and allowing him to enjoy sitting on this powerful machine, we were his paparazzi.
As a parent, there are multiple moments every day that I want to bottle up and keep forever. To stop time, I pull out my phone and take photos or videos that won’t do the memory justice. I’m frequently torn between being part of a scene and documenting it to revisit later.
Our digital memories are potent. They allow us to time travel back to precious moments and to share them with family and friends far away. But it’s very easy to find that we constantly have phones between ourselves and our children as we try to document it all.
As always, simple systems can help out.
The 3 x 3 x 3 system
The 3 x 3 x 3 system is a method of efficiently taking nine pictures of a situation or event that perfectly captures the essence of it, and that look beautiful together. Then you tuck your phone away and stop documenting.
This system is also beneficial if you have thousands of photos on your phone that are essentially the same shot of your child straight on. The system forces you to take more of a creative approach.
Here is how it works:
Take three long shots
Take three medium shots
Take three close-ups
Put away your phone [Do not skip this step]
You don’t have to follow the order above. In fact, it's better if you don’t. You might take a long shot, go in for a close-up, move a bit, and take some others. You might also take a few, then play with your child for a bit and then, after a while, take a few more.
I typically like five to seven of the nine photographs to have people in them. While my child is the main event, I want to be able to feel the moment when I go back to it. Including a few pictures without people enables you to revisit the ambience or details of the scene you might otherwise forget.
I followed this method at the beach last weekend to illustrate the system. I don’t like sharing pictures of my son’s face on the internet, so none of these pics have him looking at the camera. That misses a lot of the magic – in real life, I would have 4-6 of the pictures with his face in them.
I also haven’t edited these pictures – I didn’t want to create something unrealistic. These are just regular iPhone pictures.
Three long shots
Long shots have the subject far away. They are often used to set the scene as they include a lot of periphery. They are good to take at the beginning of an event or on entering a space. I particularly like using these shots to capture the whole scene, like our stuff next to him playing.
Three medium shots
Medium shots are at medium range. If you’re taking a photo of a person at medium range, it would be anything from their full body to just the top half taking up most of the image. Typically for the medium shots, I’ll take a couple of the people and then add a picture looking straight down, like here of my son’s toys. I also took one of him taking off his shoes straight down as I wanted to remember how quick he was to get them off so he could play in the sand!
Three closeup shots
Close-up shots are what they say on the tin, photos at close range. They capture details like hands and eyes or food at close range. These are always some of my favourite pictures. I especially like getting down at my kid's level to capture his hands playing as it feels like I am getting his perspective when I revisit them – like him playing with the excavator here.
Put your phone away
Now the critical part – you’ve got your nine photos and captured the feel of the memory. Put your phone away and enjoy being a participant in life!
Top tip: If you tend to pull out your phone to keep tabs on the time, set an alarm to go off when you’ll need to start getting things ready to leave. That way, you don’t need to keep monitoring your phone and can just play until the alarm goes off.
Voila, nine photos that capture the feel and joy of time with your child without ‘taking photos’ becoming the activity itself. Below you can see how they all look together. Remember, in real life I’d have photos of his face in here.
One note to end on. Sometimes we can’t put our phones away and enjoy time with our children. Maybe something stressful is going on. Perhaps it was exhausting getting your kids to wherever they are. Whatever the reason, you might want to hide behind the camera and have photos for later to know your kids were having a good time, even if you weren’t. That’s ok too.