The Cooney’s attend my CrossFit gym and reached out to me because they had taken a job offer in Florida and were selling their home and moving. While, the job offer was amazing, they were sad about leaving their life in Franklin, Tennessee. I have had several clients reach out to me to capture their last days at a home before a big move… it’s neat to capture that for them, from the perspective of closing a chapter before a new one begins. What I am creating is a timestamp. A specific place in time before change. I think often about the social psychology effects of social media and how that has effected what we photograph. Social media has shifted our entire view of photography. For both clients and photographers. Photographers can fall into the line of thinking that a photo has to be absolutely perfect to have value, when in reality… meaningful matters far more than perfection. I will never hold back a less than perfect photo that has deep meaning for a client.
What I think of when I think of time stamps are … houses we used to live in or an old couch we had. I photograph that couch if its in the frame my client’s are in and I think ahead 20 years, on them looking at their photos and saying “Remember that couch?!” Or in this case… their littles probably won’t remember their house at all. But these photos will give them some form of memory.
I think about timestamps and how we currently capture maternity clients. We get them dressed up and place nearly all of them in some sort of outdoor scenery. This is beautiful, and has value…. But there is no story there. When I think of my mom being pregnant with me I think of her telling me the story of her standing on her porch in the 80s smoking a cigarette, barefoot. It was super hot and that day a big breeze blew through. She enjoyed this breeze but later found it out was a tornado on the other side of town. ? Oh, the 80s!!! But How I wish I had a photo of that! A timestamp of then. of her in her REAL self. What good would a photo of her dressed up in a field be to me? There is no timestamp there, except for the timestamp of “back when we dressed up for maternity sessions and stood in fields” ?
I never want to knock anyone’s personal choices or the photographer’s work, and I only mean to happily discuss the social psychology of photography.
I love photographing this family. I wanted to tell the story of how they had fun on their land and how connected they were. and I really wanted to show the kiddos that their parents LOVED playing with them. It is so important to capture the parents for the kids not just the kids for the parents.
Enjoy The Cooney’s photos!
