What's important to you?

I am often struck by the stories I hear from people about their experiences when they have their picture taken or about their fears of having them taken. So many times they had a horrid experience. It didn't matter how the images turned out all they remembered was how bad their children were, how long it took, how stressed out they were, how they had to drag their hubby there...the list could go on and on.

 Then they take some of the images they got and blow them up big and put them on their walls and send to family. hum.... I guess since I have the advantage of taking lots of pictures I want my kids and family as real as they can be and having fun.

My daughter illustrates my point perfectly. I took and image of my three kids last summer at my parent's house. My youngest was just under a year and just hard to keep still or have look at the camera! We tried for three nights to get an image of the three of them. So by the third night this mama was pretty stressed. My 4 year old was not happy at all and while she was looking and had an ok "face" on you could still tell she wasn't herself. But I liked the picture and I had a picture frame that I wanted to use so I blew this image up to a 24x30. Every morning at breakfast she would look at that picture and tell me how sad she was in that picture. Yes it was a nice image.... but not of a nice time.

Don't we want pictures were our family is real, inviting, personal, intimate, and authentic? I do. I would take an image of my child any day covered in dirt and wearing jeans with holes over a perfectly matched outfit from J Crew (which by the way I really do love their stuff....) looking and smiling at the camera all the while sitting still with their hands perfectly on their waist.

I photograph my family being family. I think this is what I have been looking for in my images and work. I am drawn to soft feminine touches, I am drawn to authentic moments. I am drawn to home (no matter how imperfect), and I am drawn to simple. If I am going to take the time to do work... I want it to be meaningful. The image is just the memory. I want to look at beautiful memories that make me smile, make me pause, and make me turn to my child or husband and go "remember when this happened?"

My style isn't for everyone... but if you want to allow yourself to be you and to allow me to show you how perfect you, your kids, and family is just the way they are I would be delighted. This does mean you have do leave the stress behind, stop pinning all of these awesome family poses on pinterest, and realize that the image you love the most of your family is not one where everyone is looking at the camera. Can you do that? Because if you can and are willing to really just relax you will have a wonderful time and beautiful images to remember it by.