Dave Engledow has experienced what most fathers have when their first child is born: exhaustion and the fear of turning into one of those irresponsible fathers who have no time for their children. And so, he turns this worry into a hilarious and adorable photo series that depicts what a new, clueless and sleep-deprived dad might do with a kid. Together, he and his then nearly six-weeks old daughter Alice, started this zany photo series that completely went viral over the next two years.

“I was feeling exhausted from a lack of sleep, and I wanted to create an image that made fun of just how completely clueless I was feeling as a new father,” Dave explains. “So I had the idea of doing a shot where I was holding Alice like a football and distractedly using her milk for my coffee. As I was putting the shot together in my mind, I realized the joke would be stronger if the coffee mug said something like ‘World’s Best Father’ on it. So we got the mug, put the shot together, and then posted it. We had friends wanting us to continue creating these kind of images, and the photo series just kind of took off from there.”

“The character is sort of a manifestation of all of my fears and insecurities as a parent,” Dave continued. “He’s distracted; that’s one of the fears that I had as a father, that I’m going to be so absorbed in my own world, that I’m going to miss my child growing up. I was constantly afraid from the minute Alice was born, that I was going to be that guy on the news that you read about that was driving down the road with the car seat on top of the car.”

So how does Dave do it? Usually, he and his wife, Jen, would come up of new ideas and spend an hour "prepping" the stage. In almost all the shoots, his and Alice's scenes are shot separately.

Dave describes shooting those photos:

“Before she could walk, these were pretty easy, because we just had to prop her up or set her up on the table and make sure she didn’t fall over. But now that she’s old enough to kind of walk away and be interested in other things, we really have to work to make it like a game for her. So we’ll shoot Alice’s part, then I’ll set the camera on auto and go into the scene and just ham it up.

Editing takes probably five to ten hours. Photoshop is very heavily involved. It allows me to work in layers so I can add flames or sharp knife in post. I often get asked if I’m ever putting Alice in dangerous situations — that’s not the case at all. Alice doesn’t actually have to be sitting on a barbecue grill with her feet directly over the hot flames. I shoot her part first, later light the fire and merge the images together.”

Today there are more than 130 “World’s Best Father” images and Dave has already appeared in numerous talk shows as well as being able to publish a book.

Dave of course, dedicated all of this to his angel, Alice.

"This has been a project that’s for Alice. I want to be able to have something that I can give to her that she’ll look back on and treasure."