COEUR d'ALENE, Idaho (AP) — A naked little boy sits on his mother's lap, just one flick of the shutter away from the quintessential baby shot.
Then photographer Margaret Boyd snaps the button and captures two things she wasn't expecting — the boy's expression of extreme relief and a curving stream of baby pee fixed forever right between his eyes.
"That's the one thing about naked babies," Margaret says with a laugh. "They pee."
Photographs of gurgling, cooing, quizzical, laughing, sleeping, playing babies in all their alphabetical ranges of expressions and poses line Boyd's downtown home, studio and table. In one shot, the parents are exchanging tender kisses over the baby's head — and his reaction to the smooch is that of a child eating broccoli for the first time — eeeeuuuuuu!
But there are no elaborate backdrops here, no fake country fields or playhouses or North Poles. Boyd uses a simple black curtain for those babies who have yet to master the theory of gravity — and the outdoors for those whose chubby little feet want to send them running. But within those confines, not one of those photographs is posed, either by Boyd or by well-meaning parents.
"I don't care what they do," she says, her long hair caught back in a sleek ponytail. "I don't pose anybody. I just tell the parents, 'Love your baby up, kiss her, talk to her, throw her in the air. Just be! The only way to capture a baby's essence is to let them do their thing."'
But there is more behind these happy baby shots — much more behind these ordinary shadow shots of a mother's lips gently brushing her baby's cheek; two tiny feet curled in a daddy's hand; a mother gently massaging her expanding belly; a dark-haired little girl staring up shyly at her mother's rounded stomach; a mud-splattered child playing at the beach.
Life juxtaposes with death here. In fact, in many ways, death feeds the life here.
The genesis of Boyd's business — Margaret Boyd Photography (www.mboydphotos.com) — is the death of the love of her life, Bill Boyd, who died in his sleep at 40, three months before their second anniversary.
Their baby, Ava, was only 4 1/2 months old at the time.
"I grieved for him, but his death was a gift in a way as well," she says. "My whole perspective of life changed. His death at 40 made me realize that 'Oh my gosh, I might not have much time left.' So I started this, I started taking pictures of Ava.
"And I realized, I can do this! I can! I've never felt more positive about anything."
Boyfriend and girlfriend in their youth, they met again over their parents' deaths and rediscovered all the things they loved about each other.
"He showed me by his death how precious life is," she says. "I want to capture a baby's soul and a baby's beauty. There's a real love connection between the people in my photographs that speaks to me."
Because she has known grief, Boyd now also reaches out to those who have suffered loss, too, and a particularly poignant loss — that of a child. She has joined the American Child Photographer's Charity Guild and is now offering her services to women whose babies will never be more than what are captured in her photographs, babies who will never make it to adulthood, babies who will never make it to life.
"In this organization, photographers all over the country reach out to mothers at least five weeks pregnant whose baby is going to die or is already dead in the womb," Boyd says. "We offer to photograph her pregnant belly or, a tiny foot, or whatever they're comfortable with.
"Because those babies were souls. Those babies were spirits."
She has her own spirits circling 'round her in this cozy downtown home. She does believe in the afterlife, and that has helped her cope with the physical loss of the man who put stars in her eyes and made her believe in fairy tales. Enough things have happened, enough unusual things, to convince her that both her father and her husband are the guiding forces behind this business that champions new life, new hope and new happiness.
"I feel these photos in my heart," she says. "It's such a high for me when I capture that love — the love they share. Beauty and innocence and our own love, Bill's and mine, shape my work.
"I'm sure he's with me, him and my dad. I see signs of it all the time."
There are so many twists and turns in Margaret's story that it's hard not to believe in the connections she's drawn through her fog of grief and the rock-hard strength she used to pull herself through. She and Bill are both from Rhode Island, knew each other, cared for each other, then wandered into different lives.
He met his first wife when he was in Germany. They moved to Spokane, had two boys and divorced.
She got a master's degree in human resources from Suffolk University in Boston, turning her back on a long-simmering interest in photography and working her way up the corporate ladder.
Then her father died, and Bill's own mother was facing her own mortality. Margaret and Bill found themselves back in Rhode Island. They went out to dinner and it was, says Margaret, still with a glow on her face, "almost like fairy dust had fallen on me."
The fairy dust never stopped coming down.
"I'd never even really felt like I was home anywhere," Margaret says. I told him, "I'm so tired of working. I want to be madly in love. I want to have a child. I want to have a home."
But he didn't. Bill already had two children and wasn't at all sure he wanted to be a father again.
Then they went out again. And suddenly Bill was saying, "I guess I'll have another kid."
She never thought she would leave her Eastern roots. But suddenly there they were in North Idaho, where Bill worked as a Realtor and Margaret was carving out her own career, the two of them creating a curly-haired blonde cutie named Ava whom Margaret says is the spitting image of him.
"I remember him telling me, 'I feel like I've finally made it. I've married the woman I love. I had two boys and a darling little girl. I have my career.' And I said the same thing," Margaret said. "I said, 'Life is so easy now. ... I've finally got a little taste of paradise."'
One week later, on a Monday morning, March 21, 2005, Bill's alarm clock went off. And went off. And went off.
"I thought he was in the shower," Margaret said. "Then I heard Bill's 10-year-old son, Nick, was calling, 'Dad! Dad!' I thought he was just talking to him. Then I heard him say to Chris, his 15-year-old brother, 'Dad's not getting out of bed!'
"And I just knew."
Bill Boyd was dead at 40 of undiagnosed coronary artery disease. There were no signs, no warnings, no chance to undo the damage the years had done.
He was just gone.
"He looked like he was just sleeping," says Margaret. "But his side was a welt of purplish red."
She had always had an interest in photography, and in high school her father had built her a darkroom. When Bill died, she didn't want to just stick Ava in daycare. By taking pictures of their baby, she felt the circle of life completing itself. Friends began soliciting her work, and her work became her healing. It also inspired her to join the guild that takes photographs of the babies who won't grow up.
"There's something about kids," she says. "I would never do weddings or other pictures because the older people get, the more complex they get. But babies are so pure. With every picture, it's 'Aw! Aw!'
"Every picture's about love."