I cannot begin to tell you how many times I hear from friends and potential clients, “No I don’t want to have pictures done right now because I’m too fat/I don’t like my hair/I have nothing to wear/etc.” I get it, we all want to look our best so we can show off the pictures to everyone and hang them in our house. We always put it off until a better time comes where we are feeling better about ourselves. But let’s be honest, in today’s day and age, is there ever a time where we 100% truly love ourselves? No. We always feel like there’s something to change, something to refine, something new for us to decide we don’t like.

You ever have those moments in your life where time stands still? Where you forget about all of the tangible things in life and can only see what’s important in your life? Before my dad passed away, I took so many things for granted – everything from telling someone how I feel, to making a change in my life, to starting a new project, etc. It wasn’t until after my dad passed that I felt that feeling. My whole life paused. For years. Just stood still. Once someone leaves your life – whether it be because they passed or they moved or you lose touch and can’t find them again – all you have to remember that person are memories. When my dad passed away, I found myself clutching onto the photos that I had of him. I would look through the photo albums of him as a kid, of my mom and my dad in their pre-kid years, and then all of the photos once my sister and I were born. I’d watch videos so I could hear his contagious laugh again. I love looking back at when I was a young toddler. I was too young to have vivid memories from that age. But the photos, those are what I have to remember. They are what show me and others, like my husband who never met my father, how much my father loved being a father. How no matter how bad he’d be feeling that day or how long he worked, he’d always get on the ground with us to play. How he’d do anything to make us laugh, like sticking carrot strings up his nose. It helps people, like my husband, get to understand my dad and the pure love he had for us. How he’d lay his life down to protect us.

Those photos are what I cherish so close to my heart. Life is precious. Your kids and grandkids for that matter aren’t going to look back at the photos and think, “wow, mom should not have had pictures done because her highlights were fading.” No, they will look back and see the love you had for the family, the joy in your eyes, the cute way your nose would crinkle when you laugh, the way dad would always hold your hand to let you know he’s there. That’s what they see. That’s the love they’d feel. Those photos, that’s what your child will have to remember you. Memories can fade, especially depending on how old you are when you lose someone. But the photos, those will last forever.

My advice?

1 // Get family pictures taken at least once a year, if not twice (spring + fall).

2 // Book ahead of time. Photographers get booked up fast, especially in the fall.

3 // Hire a professional photographer to take your photos, don’t just set up your camera in the backyard on a tripod. Your tripod can’t capture pictures of you as you are, it’ll only capture pictures of you posed stiffly in your backyard with fake inauthentic smiles on your faces.

While yes, I’d love to be the one to take your family’s photos, to capture the love, to share in that special time in your lives. But no, that’s not the purpose of this post. The point is to just go out and do it. To give your family something to hold onto and to forever remember you by.

One of the most beautiful parts of my job is that I make time stand still. I am blessed enough to be able to capture your family. To stop the beautiful moment of laughter, of kisses, of family hugs. So many times those moments pass us by, but very little do we ever stop to recognize the beauty in them. Or how much we’d miss those things if they were gone.