Families are indeed a strange beast. My own relationship with mine changed dramatically around the time I hit my mid 30's and then again once Amy was born 2 and a half years ago. Photography-wise, having kids has made think about the value/necessity of taking this type of snap and creating a visual record of my kids spending time with their grandparents and my grandfather.
Achieving this at a 'quality snapshot' level is kind of fun and/or challenging (isn't everything to do with kids!) and sometimes it's the only type of photography I find time/opportunity to spend more than a few minutes on?.but you've got to be quick with the shutter release because babies and young children never hang around :-)
An extra note on my grandfather; he joined the Air Force during WWII and trained as a pilot, but moved into an aerial reconnaissance role before manning a land-based, mobile processing vehicle until VE Day. Essentially he spent the last 18 months of his forces career (1944-46) developing film and producing prints (aerial stuff, official propaganda photos, personal snaps himself and other people in camp and black market material of scantily clad ladies). He was based in South Africa, the Indian sub-continent and the Far East. The cool part is that I have his photo collection from those days and his war diaries (with almost daily entries). Loads of interesting stuff in there. A future project I have set myself is to create a website matching diary entries to appropriate photos. It was quite a moving experience reading those diaries.
Being the only Wenn male on my side of the family, there was a bit of pressure on me to continue the family name and no-one was more delighted than Charlie, the oldest living Wenn male, when Joe was born this July. The sad part is that Charlie is now virtually blind and while he could hold his great-grandson and cuddle and talk to him, he couldn't see him particularly well.
