As my son grows I’m understanding more and more the importance of family photos. The other day Jasper was admiring all the photos on the walls of my parents house. So many of those faces are no longer with us, people who never got to meet Jasper. As my Dad told Jasper who they were and how much they would have loved him, we all started have a little cry. It was hard but then I realised that how grateful I was for those photos. Yes Jasper will never get to speak to these people but he will know them and their smiles. Thanks to those family photos.
This eventually lead me on to thinking further about the importance of family photos. There is of course the obvious one, family photos are a great chance to celebrate milestones. I’ve had the pleasure of helping people celebrate and document, engagements, weddings, pregnancies, new babies, first birthdays, graduations and everything in between.
These moments in our lives are important and they deserve to be given a special place in our hearts and memories. I’ve been so lucky to give families images of these fleeting moments so that they can enjoy them forever.
Then I thought back to a conversation with my Dad years and years ago. He told me that as you get older time goes by quicker and once you’re a parent it goes even faster. At the time I didn’t believe him because I was 18 and as we can all attest, teenagers know everything…..
The importance of family photos really hits me when I look back through the pictures of my son when he was tiny. I’m so glad I have them because otherwise I don’t think I would actually believe he was ever that small! It’s just so hard to comprehend that he could have grown and changed and become his own person in such a short space of time.
Dad was right (don’t tell him) time goes by so quickly once you are a parent. It might not feel like it at the time, especially during those long wakeful nights but it really does fly by. So it’s magical to be able to slow it down and savour the moment with these photos.
Having a professional portrait session means something else too…YOU will actually be in the photos! So often we’re the ones taking pictures of our children so of course we’re not actually in them! I think it’s wonderful to have images that capture how little your children once were, how perfectly they fit in your arms. So even when they’re all grown and towering over you, you will still have a vivid memory of how their whole tiny hand wrapped around your one finger.
Documenting your story for the rest of time really illustrates the importance of family photos. I can see it now, decades to come, your child is all grown with children of their own. They flick through the old family photos and come across the one of you all playing in the forest, wrapped in a blanket and sharing a story together.
Your grown child smiles and tells their children how they remember the day of your photoshoot. How it had been raining the night before so when you got to the forest they stood in a muddy puddle so deep they almost lost their wellie boot. They’ll talk about how much they loved that book about the hedgehog and how they would always laugh with their little sister whenever Dad got to the part about the hedgehogs big sneeze.
They will forever have a time capsule to that chapter of their life growing up.
“What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
If you would love to see one of my lovely client families celebrating their story then be sure to check out this blog
Want to know more about a family session with me? Then head over to my portfolio here.
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