The Perfect Family Selfie

I knew the trip was going to be a risk, and I thought bringing the kids along might get me forever labeled as a bad parent. But sometimes the yearnings of the spirit deny any pitiful human logic from mounting a resistance.

I had imagined the perfect family selfie, and I couldn’t let it go. The picture would be of my wife and two daughters crouched on the overlook of the magnificent ruins of Machu Picchu.

The trouble was, our daughters were only four and six.

Machu Picchu isn’t an easy trip. The flight to Lima is twelve hours, and then you have to catch a plane to Cusco, a city at over 11,000 feet of elevation. From there you must wind your way down the sacred valley relying on taxis, trains, buses, and hiking before reaching the final prize.

I was concerned the travel complications and elevation might be more than my little ones could take. After all, most people who go to Machu Picchu don’t bring their kids.

But when the weight of the negatives became too heavy, I forced myself to think of the positives. It would be a great cultural experience for them, a tremendous physical achievement. Think of the memories and self-confidence they’d gain!

My wife and I debated the merits for several months. We had our concerns, but every time we took a family walk, our youngest, Ariel would run as if she had inexhaustible stores of energy. Finally, after one of these excursions, I turned to my wife and said, “I think she can handle it.”

My wife looked back and said, “You know what? I think you’re right.”

So, it was settled and we made arrangements. My wife was born in Peru and I lived there for ten years, so this wasn’t a new journey for us. I’d taken dozens of people up to the lost Inca city and I knew the drill.

One of the things I always tell people when they’re planning a trip to Machu Picchu is to bring a DSLR. Cell phones take great pictures, but when you get into digital editing software, you discover that the larger optics of dedicated cameras capture a lot more information than is initially visible.

However, one of the fundamental rules of photography is that the best camera is the one you have with you. And so it turned out that I would take my favorite family photo at Machu Picchu with a Nokia Lumia 928 cell phone.

There are photos that are great because of their intrinsic artistic qualities, while others are noteworthy because they represent a significant moment. The grainy images of Neil Armstrong descending onto the surface of the moon are not dynamic balances of color and form, but the image remains fascinating for its status as the first visual representation of a human being on another celestial body.

Peru can be a bit of a wilderness, and I decided to leave my regular cell phone at home. In the past it was common for pickpockets to target tourists with iPhones or Galaxys that they could steal for their resale value. I decided to buy a used “burner” phone off Amazon, so I did a quick Google search for phones with the best cameras that had been released a few years earlier.

I settled on the Nokia Lumia 928 because it had a dedicated button which would instantly call up the camera and could be used as a shutter for more stable images. I’ve always hated pounding on a touch screen to get a shot.

These days, my children are my primary subject, and I was photographing them with my Pentax K200D. Mainly I wanted to capture their faces, so I was using a lens with a lot of zoom which wasn’t ideal for landscapes. Early in my trip, I got into the habit of snapping a few contextual shots with the Nokia before switching back to the DSLR.

I like using zoom because I prefer natural expressions to artificial smiles forced onto a face in response to a camera. When you meld into the scenery your subjects can forget you’re there, which allows you to capture genuine and honest facial expressions.

We’d been hiking in Cusco when my girls got tired and spontaneously sat down to rest on the pavement. I had the Nokia in hand, and I snapped a quick shot of them. Later on, I used the photo editing options on the camera to remove the color except for their faces. A few months later, I did some additional retouching on Adobe Lightroom.

Adobe Lightroom is my primary tool for photo editing. It allows you to tilt a photo with great precision as you’ll find most of your original captures are something off center. I also enjoy the options of improving clarity, exposure, and adding a post-crop vignette.

Throughout our trip I found the Nokia to be a versatile device, and using the filters I was able to create a kind of 60s style image of my daughter enjoying a glass of strawberry juice. However, if you decide to edit a photo later on desktop software, you’re better off using the original picture rather than the one you enhanced with the camera’s features.

Machu Picchu is a fun place to photograph. It seems like it doesn’t matter whether it’s sunny or overcast, whether it’s foggy or raining, you always seem to create a magnificent image. I’ve hiked up early in the morning to capture the first rays of the sun striking the mountain, but on the day I went with my children, our objective was just to get there with no consideration for lighting.

Our first family trip to Machu Picchu took place in 2016. Like many life events, we didn’t really know the full significance at the time, other than the fact that it was something we felt we should do. But now I recognize that the picture we took there represents the transition moment between infancy and adolescence.

The girls we brought down from the mountain were a whole lot bigger and more capable than the girls we took up. Our Machu Picchu selfie represents the beginning of a new series of family adventures. I’m eternally grateful for each and every one of them.