Over the 11.5 years I have been a photographer, I have witnessed and been apart of the industry and how it anchored to the social media world. Social Media led the industry down its path and it still continues – the path towards being trendy rather than meaningful and purposeful.
If you think about what would happen to photography, if you couldn’t see other photographer’s work online…. every photographer would be unique and the images created would come from their own mind. They would capture what they uniquely saw within their session. We would also have a lot less photographers ?
Photos of your family should not be random. What I want for my motherhood friends is that they can reach the end of raising children and not have regrets because they can’t remember so many little moments. They cant go back and revisit those parts of their life that matter most.
What is the definition of “meaningful”? To me, its capturing the essence of life and of your story as a family, your love for one another, the legacy you’re leaving for your children, and capturing your love for them. The moments captured are not just for mom and dad, but they are for the children, so they can see how much you loved them. Not just remember it, but to be able to revisit it, is extremely important.
The only way to know what is meaningful to children, is to ask them. But we cant always know what our children feel is meaningful right now in their lives, but also what will be meaningful later.
The reality is our life as families, is never going to be perfect. But our photographs and videos of real life, show that yes, our life wasn’t perfect, but there was ALWAYS LOVE.
In this article, a father expresses his regrets of how he lived his life before his son died suddenly at age 8. Even though you don’t want to feel the pain of reading that article, read it anyway. Try to think ahead of how to live now so we dont have regrets one day. As best as we can.
When moms decide they want photographs done (or video hopefully) I want them to stop making the decision revolve around trends and Christmas Cards. I want them to decided to get them done and to choose a photographer that will make meaningful memories out of their session. I want them to be vulnerable enough to be captured in the most honest way. Because as I have said before and will say forever, our time here is limited. and someday, we might not have our lives as they are now. Don’t they deserve to be captured in an honest way?
