Bradenton baby does what comes naturally during photo op and takes the web by storm
EAST MANATEE -- Part of every parent's laugh-about-it-later experience of child rearing is when the just-fed, undiapered newborn takes care of business in a New York minute, like in daddy's arms or mom's lap.
Sarasota's Mark and Shayna Resnick were in the midst of a photo shoot with their 10-day-old newborn, Asher, and East Manatee baby photographer Gigi O'Dea, when that moment happened -- and then it went viral.
O'Dea's assignment was to take a picture of a naked Asher on top of his dad's back, which is covered by a large tribal-type tattoo of wings.
"Having photographed newborns now for more than 10 years, I've come to expect the unexpected," O'Dea said.
Trying to make things go as smoothly as possible, Shayna Resnick nursed Asher before the shoot. But over the next hours, Asher not only emptied his bladder and his bowels on his dad, but spit up in his face as well.
"We were howling with laughter," O'Dea said. "It makes me smile just to think about. I love it when it happens to dads. But we got the final image."
Just for fun, O'Dea posted on her Facebook page, memoryportraitsbygigi, one of the out-takes from the shoot.
The image, showing poop on dad's back, has gone viral, O'Dea said Thursday.
"I'm amazed and excited because this has never happened to me," O'Dea said.
The blitz got going when Mark Resnick shared the image on the social network site for dads, Life of Dad.
"I put it on the site and it quickly got 60 'likes' and I didn't think anything of it," said Mark Resnick, who graduated from Riverview High School in the mid-1990s and is now the general manager of Sophie's Restaurant in Saks Fifth Avenue at The Mall at University Town Center.
"Then I got a call from a friend who said, 'Mark. you are blowing up,'" Resnick said. "It hit 11,000 and when I woke up the next morning it was at 20,000. Then, 40, 50, 60,000."
"The Today Show" called O'Dea and received permission to use the photo and a story on its website, TODAY.com.
"Then it went really crazy," Resnick said. "It hit Buzzfeed. Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Pop Sugar, Huffington Post U.S. and U.K. and in Australia. If you Googled 'pooped on dad' it came up. I think, by now, millions and millions have seen it."
"It's a parenting thing," Mark Resnick said when asked why he thought the image has exploded. "It reminds everyone of their newborn. It hits home."
O'Dea said people love the image because it tells a story without words.
"Dad has a kind of smirk on his face that says, 'Oh well, what are you going to do?' " O'Dea said Thursday. "And Asher seems just so totally happy being right there on dad's back."
Shayna and Mark Resnick have been married two years and met when Mark was a bartender at the Polo Grill on Main Street in Lakewood Ranch.
"We wanted a photo to look like Asher had Mark's wings," said Shayna Resnick, who is an athletic trainer at Bayshore High School, the PAL Athletic League and for the Bradenton Gladiators football team. "We heard about Gigi through the grapevine. Her pictures are in my doctor's office and at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. Her photos look like she spends tons of time positioning these babies to make them look beautiful."
O'Dea also has 20 years' experience as a baby nurse and works part time at the Sarasota Memorial Hospital neonatal intensive care unit, as well as running her photography business. Neither the Resnicks nor O'Dea have profited financially from the viral image, but they don't seem to mind.
"No, it's all about fun," Mark Resnick said. "If I get a call from Pampers about diaper commercials one day I wouldn't mind. But for now it will be something to kid Asher about when we meet his first girlfriend."
Richard Dymond, Herald reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7072 or contact him via Twitter @RichardDymond.
This story was originally published September 11, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Bradenton baby does what comes naturally during photo op and takes the web by storm."