Print edition: 
If anyone could get a busy grandma to leave her kitchen on Thanksgiving Day — and not only leave her kitchen but take the turkey with her, still steaming in its roasting pan, and pose with it in the driveway — it's Joel Sartore.
The award-winning National Geographic (and former Wichita Eagle) photographer says the light was awful in his mom's kitchen that day, and he was too lazy to mess with a flash. (Thanksgiving appetizers will do that to a person.)
So he asked his dear mother to haul the turkey outside in front of the house, where he could get a decent shot.
"She didn't want to," Sartore says. "She wanted to take her apron off and fix her hair. I said, 'No, no, no! Let's haul that turkey outside and get this done. Quit arguing with me and it'll happen a lot faster.' "
She was mortified. Especially when a neighbor shouted, "Sharon! That turkey has got to be either really good or really bad!"
But Sharon Sartore laughed, and grasped that pan with her oven mitts, and smiled wide for her son. Now she loves the picture, which is featured in Sartore's fabulous book, "Photographing Your Family."
So do I.
I love it because her apron clashes with her sweatshirt, and the trees are bare and the driveway's cracked. A small patch of snow still melts in the yard, and a car tire peeks from one corner of the frame.
The photograph is perfectly imperfect. Like life. Like the holidays, when we're so busy making sure food is cooked and hands are washed that we rarely stop to snap a picture. If we do, it's a photo of the kids, with a corner of Mom as she flees the scene.
We love our cameras. Every cell phone has one. But we seldom step back to get a wider view. They're called environmental portraits — photos of people that give a sense of time and space, of where you are and what you're doing. They're real and true, full of history and soul, and they're important.
Remember that when you're cooking the turkey. And don't even listen to the neighbors.
