Once In Forever: The Importance of Family Portraits | Intuition Design Photography | Mankato Family Photographer
I look around my walls and I feel a twinge of guilt. I have been meaning to get our pictures updated. I am usually good at getting my youngster's milestone images displayed, but I will admit in 2015 I dropped the ball big time. Knowing that my job description has family photographer in it makes me no less human or immune to the crazy moments of life that make it easy to say "well maybe next year" to the annual family photo.
But being a family photographer also helps me understand the importance of good images that show the perfection that you call family. Last February I read a blog post by Design Aglow about how family portraits can boost your child's self-esteem. It resonated with me, and I set it aside. Now, I am glad I did.
This past fall I was given the privilege of photographing over 70 families over 3 days of mini sessions. You know what the common theme was? We haven't had a professional family photo taken in: _____. Insert a any number of years from 2 to 4 to even 10. In a snap that blog was back in my mind and providing those family portraits for my clients made me understand why I needed to kick my butt into gear about getting my own family portraits done.
4 Reasons Why its important to get Yearly Family Portraits
4 Your Family Changes: In a variety of ways your family changes. While this is obvious, sometimes we get lost in the rush of day-to-day activities that we for get to take a moment to document the changes as memories. One day a conversation will start with "Remember when?" and to relive that memory fully you whip out your image box and rifle through photographs. Yearly photos help categorize your changes in the way of beautiful memories.
3 They Display Your Family's Universal Truth: I will admit one of my photographer's pet peeves is the request for the get a "nice" family photo. It's more because in my six years of photographing families I have come to know that "nice" is subjective; that families cannot be boiled down to one word. This is why I love to ask my families to interact with each other even if I do posed sessions. I always take some of these out takes and add them to my client's gallery. Because I know those out takes define my client's families better then everyone smiling nicely at my lens. So, by all means, get the 'nice' image that will help get your holiday cards done, but also make sure you get images that show your family in all their wonderfully lovable, but sometimes crazy antics.
2 Your Family is Worth "Just Because Moments": I understand that family portraits and holiday cards go hand-in-hand, but I am the first to shout: "THEY ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE!" Your family is worth "just because moments." Like grabbing your favorite scoop of ice cream as a treat (or Starbucks frappuccino in my case!), you can get you family portraits done "just because." So take whatever reason you want and use it. Because memories with your family is worth it.
Which brings me to my last point.
1 This is Once in Forever: My motto for my business is "moments you love, with the people you love most. Ultimately this is why I want to get my family in front of the camera. I want to do something that I love doing, (hiking, cooking great food, eating great food, etc, etc,.) with those I love. And I want these moments captured because, the memories you make in those moments are just a little piece of your everyday life. Tomorrow is never promised, so I want my little pieces of lovely moments to represent forever for me.
A big thank you to Welsh Heritage Farms for hosting my apple orchard mini sessions this year! And I hope you all enjoy these once in forever moments!
P.S. Family Lifestyle and Documentary sessions booked before Jan 31st will honor 2015 prices! :)