MOMS ARE USUALLY BEHIND THE CAMERA

If you’re a mom, I’m willing to bet you have approximately 47,000 photos of your children on your phone.

Your kids eating ice cream, on vacation and first days of school. Not to mention, birthdays, soccer games and Christmas mornings. Random Tuesday afternoons when the light was pretty and they were doing something you wanted to remember.

But here’s my question:

How many of those photos have you in them?

And I don’t mean a selfie.

I mean photographs that show you as part of your family.



I’ve done it too.

We’re the ones who notice the moment and reach for the phone. We are the documentarians. But sometimes, we forget we're part of the story.

Kids aren't going to look through those photographs and wonder whether we were five pounds heavier than we wanted to be or whether we loved our hair that day.

They're going to look for us.

Family of four posing together at a Christmas tree farm, parents with two children smiling outdoors.
A young family with a baby girl and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel posing outdoors in a warm, candid portrait.

I understand this differently now

I have two boys, and one of them is already in college.

We all live in the moment, because the lists are long, practice is at 6 and we just hope there isn't a ton of homework.

Kids get taller, faces change, voices may change. Eventually, they're driving themselves places.

Somehow you're left wondering how all of that happened quite so quickly.

It has made me appreciate photographs differently.

Of course I want photographs of my boys.

But I also want photographs that show what it looked like when we were together.


Your kids will want to see you, too

This is something I think we forget when we're deciding whether we want to be photographed.

Maybe you don't feel quite like yourself right now. But the photograph isn't only for you.

Your children will want to see the way you looked at them.

They'll want to see your arms wrapped around them. They'll want to remember how small they once looked standing next to you.

They'll want proof that you were there for all of it.

Because you were.


Family photographs don't have to be perfect

When I photograph a family, I'm always going to get the photograph where everyone is looking at the camera.

We need that one. But, it's also about engaging as a family.

The way your child reaches for you. The laugh that happens right after the “official” picture. Your teenager rolling their eyes and then cracking up. The way everyone naturally falls together when they're not thinking quite so hard about being photographed.

Those are the photographs that feel like your family.

And you belong in them.

A joyful family of four poses outdoors among lush green trees, smiling warmly for a portrait photo.
A mother and young daughter in matching dresses walk hand-in-hand through a vibrant flower field.
Family of five smiling in a colorful zinnia flower field at golden hour, parents with three young children outdoors.

Don't wait until everything feels perfect

Schedules are crazy. Someone needs a haircut. Your child is going through a phase. You want to lose ten pounds.

Next year will probably have its own list.

Meanwhile, everyone keeps growing.

So if you're scrolling through your camera roll and realizing that you have hundreds of photographs of the people you love and very few that show you loving them.

Here is your reminder.

Hand the camera to someone else and get in the photograph.

Years from now, I don't think you'll wish you'd waited.

So, think about updating your family photographs.

I'd love to help you create photographs that include the person who's usually behind the camera.