What family THING do you want to bottle up?

Mud. She wanted to remember them in the mud. That was her family thing.

When Kara decided to have me photograph her family for an entire day she had one request. She wanted the session to happen when the weather was warm so she would have photos of kids playing in the backyard. More specifically, in the mud.

Quick Quiz: If you could bottle up one thing about family life right now so that it will always be there when you want to remember it, what would that be? Is it a particular routine? An activity? Do you want to remember something about your kid’s personality? Is it a FEELING?

On the day of the shoot, I woke up at dawn-thirty and lingered at a local Starbucks until I got the text that someone had arisen.

The whole crew did their typical summer Saturday family thing. No posing. No scripting. No special clothes. And it was totally OK to get dirty.

Another Quick Quiz: Have you honored what it is you want to remember about your family in this stage of life? Do you have photos of it? Have you wrote about it in a journal? Life changes in a blink. Who knows how many days are left where you can give your son an upside down hug or have your heart swell when your daughter laughs uncontrollably?

Not only did we memorialize the mud for Kara, but the routines, the character traits, the activities, and the feelings of what life is like right now for her family are forever safe-guarded.

Last Quick Quiz: What’s stopping you from celebrating who you are as a family and creating a visual legacy to share with your children five, ten, twenty years from now? Whatever that roadblock may be (e.g. lack of time, deathly afraid of having your picture taken, worries that your family isn’t exciting enough), let’s talk about it. I can brainstorm solutions like a champ!

When her kids have long left the nest, and they ask her what life was like on a typical day of their childhood, she not only can tell them. She can SHOW them.

P.S. Want to get more insights, rants, and musings about parenthood, childhood and photos? Click here to subscribe to my completely un-obnoxious newsletter.