Erich @ 18 months

Those of you who have seen Erich lately will know how much he has grown both physically and cognitively.  It amazes me everyday how fast he picks up new words and phrases.  He now readily recognizes things - not just specific things, but can classify them even if they look similar.  For example, when I was setting up the tripod for this shot, he pointed at the tripod and said "camera" because he knew that it was associated with the camera.

Recently I was thinking of how best to capture Erich's growth.  I've been meaning to start a family tradition - you know how some families pass down a patch quilt or blanket.  Well, I'm not much of a sewer, so a patch blanket is really out of the question.  But I am a photographer and what better way to express it than through portraits!  But how do I encapsulate all the years so that Erich only ever has to look at one portrait at a time to see how much he's grown?  Well, turns out I'm also a programmer and in programming there's this little thing called recursion.

I don't know if you remember, but a few years back HP had these commercials where someone would take a photo holding another photo.  That gave me an idea to start a new tradition:

Every six months, I will do a portrait of Erich of him holding his portrait - hopefully set with some of his favorite things at the time.

Here's the first one.  I've kept it minimalist on purpose.  Since this is the first, I had him hold the montage of his picture at ~7/8 months and a picture of the day he was born.