Manatee County photographer captures ' poo heard round the world'

EAST COUNTY — When taking cute pictures of naked newborns, accidents can happen. 

That's why photographer Gigi O'Dea comes prepared with towels and wipes and everything else needed to catch the messes that come with babies. 

But when nature struck at a recent photo shoot, it resulted in a picture that was so funny it was an instant social media hit. 

Mark and Shayna Resnick hired O'Dea to take the quintessential newborn shots: those of their cute, naked newborn cuddled on Mark Resnick's back. However, their son, Asher, made it a little more colorful than they were expecting. 

When the baby pooped on his back, it was obviously gross, Mark Resnick said, yet funny. "Gigi And Shayna could not stop laughing," he said. 

Even funnier? The image that O'Dea sent them a week later as an outtake of the photo shoot. 

The Resnicks posted the image to Facebook to share the hilarity, but couldn't have imagined what happened next. 

“My wife and I were joking maybe we could get 100 likes,” Mark Resnick said. “We got 100 likes and went to bed. About an hour later, a friend texted me and said, 'You need to look at this.' It was like 11,000. It was literally going up 500 likes every three minutes.”

Asher (or rather, his poop) made him a star.

Just the Life of Dad Facebook page, to which Resnick had posted the image Aug. 21, had received 11,724 shares, 64,704 likes and 6,748 comments as of Sept. 18. Resnick’s own Facebook page has more than 20 links to websites and blogs that have picked up the photo, including Today.com, the Huffington Post and cosmopolitan.com.

O’Dea, a neonatal intensive care nurse at Sarasota Memorial Hospital and owner of Memory Portraits by Gigi, said in 11 years of photographing newborns, she’s never experienced anything quite like the frenzy surrounding the image, called “The Guardian.”

Although it hasn’t drawn any new customers for newborn shoots yet, it produced so much such a social media buzz that she had to hire someone to handle social media for her. O'Dea, who was named "Photographer of the Year" the last two consecutive years for the Bay Professional Photographer's Association, has been contacted by today.com, an England-based company and others about using or even representing the image.

“I work really hard to make my images stand out, so to get so much recognition for an image of poop was surprising,” said O’Dea, who was named “Photographer of the Year” the last two consecutive years for the Bay Professional Photographer’s Association. “I’m very happy with the final image, though, and I’m glad that got showcased.”

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].