Maryland-based photographer Kristina Sherk has a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Reeve, and a 5-month old son, Nash. For the past four weeks she’s been home isolating with them, which is how this composite (below) came about.

“My salute to all of the stay-at-home moms,” she wrote on Facebook. “You guys deserve medals of honor, Nobel Peace prizes and Purple Hearts for your patience, inner strength, and humility.”

The Photoshop guru and devoted mother of two says the pandemic has made her realize how much hard work goes into caring for little kids. The concept for this image was born, Sherk adds, out of her daughter Reeve being so busy and moving around that sometimes it feels to Sherk like Reeve is “three kids or more instead of just one.”

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Sherk also realized she doesn’t have tons of images of her kids. “It’s like that saying about the cobbler’s son going without shoes,” she recalls. “As photographers, when we are busy and working, we are completely focused on doing what brings a paycheck through the door. I don’t really have photos of my kids, and I certainly don’t have time to take creative ones…until now.”

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For this image, Sherk says it’s a fairly easy one to do if you keep your camera in place on a tripod and then create lots of interesting or fun elements around it. “The key to making this an easy composite is that I stay extremely still in each frame and so does the camera. As Reeve moved from location to location, I could capture each frame and then stack them on top of each other and easily reveal her multiple variations.” (Sherk also used a Canon Camera Connect to take all of the images with her right hand hidden behind her leg.)

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