Lady Gran's Red Tutu

Beth Garrett

Co-Owner of Megan Hammons Photography

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When my grandson was about 3 years old, my Mom asked him if he knew what her name was.  He absolutely did not; he stared at her with a look of shock for a moment, and then finally answered her with “Lady Gran”.  My Mom’s reply; “That’ll  do!”, and so Lady Gran she came to be.  

Lady Gran announced at Thanksgiving 2017 that she was scheduled for surgery in January 2018.  This would her third surgery in less than 9 months.  I desperately wanted to get pictures of her with her 4 grandchildren and her one great grandchild.   I wanted photographs that her grandchildren’s grandchildren would cherish.  Since it is difficult to get all of the grands together at the same time and coordinate everything it takes to make a shoot like this happen, we set the date for December 31, 2017 and got to work.

Lady Gran is sassy and smart-assy, and her favor color is R E D.    I knew this shoot had to have a red something to make it pop and the one thing that kept coming to mind was a red Tutu.

Lady Gran is 67 years young and is opinionated and argumentative!  When I told her I bought a red tutu for her to wear in this shoot; you can only imagine the amount of sass and smartass she gave me.  At the end of the day, being the good mother she is; she put it on and whined the whole time.  We wouldn’t have it any other way!
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The red tutu, (thank you Amazon Prime) came in first, and then everything began to fall into place.   I hung the tutu up so that is would be wrinkle free and in a place that Lady Gran could see it often hoping she would be more comfortable with its presence.  Each time she passed it, she sighed, rolled her eyes and said something smart-assy; in true Lady Gran fashion.   

The day of the shoot, southeast Texas had an artic low move in and it was freezing.  Lady Gran was begging for rain in hopes that we would cancel, but no such luck.   We slid the red tutu on and Lady Gran let out one last begrudging, “I am not believin' this!”  

​We sat her in the rocking chair, rolled her jeans up to her thighs, took off her memory foams, slid on the red heels, fluffed the tutu, and told her to sit quietly while we worked.  Lady Gran never sits quietly and this was no exception.  Megan turned to me and giggled, then said “this is quickly turning into a Kardashian Christmas Card”. 

We left the car running with the heat on and kept the children toasty until they were needed for a shot.  We took hundreds of shots that day and were able to get one acceptable shot of the group.  In every shot, someone was talking, rolling their eyes, crying, pointing, or whining.  The end result was everything I had hoped and then some.  
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When Lady Gran stepped into her red tutu, she became sassier and smart-assier, and all those children around her; well they are chips off of that old block.