What is your “Why?”

Recently, I decided to share my “why” on the social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram) and I thought to myself, “Why not blog about it here as well.” Oftentimes, when we hire someone to do a job, be it photography or some other specialized task, we don’t think about their back story, their “why.” 

Ever since I was a little girl, I had a camera in my hand. I was the family correspondent as well as the family photographer. We moved often as my father served in the United States Air Force and this was pre-internet, so the only way to communicate was via a written letter and the occasional phone call stateside (remember those long distance charges?). 

As a child, I had learned that my paternal grandfather had passed away when my father was a teenager. Upon his passing, my {paternal} grandmother sadly destroyed most of the family photographs out of grief. We have very few photographs of my father as a child and his father as well as my grandmother. It was at this point in learning this news that I realized the importance of family photographs and maintaining the family history and heritage via photographs and letters and other important documents. Generations from now photos and letters will hold a visual and written history of your family. 

With the advent of the digital age, most store their photos digitally, not bothering to think of printing them out. Printing select photographs, documenting the events, the names of the people in them, is just as important now as it was when we took photographs using film. The digital age is constantly evolving and memories are easily lost to the digital black hole. We went from floppy disks, to cds, to usb drives and now to the cloud. Many forms of saving our precious photographs have already become obsolete. And to be honest, each time a digital image is opened, the quality diminishes ever so slightly. 

Family portrait sessions, individually sessions, christenings, birthdays, weddings are all important events to document. Print your favorites; buy an inexpensive photo album and document the memories carefully. 

Choose a photographer who is passionate about creating your memories. They need not always be stiff and boring portraits; often the best photographs are the candid ones, when one is truly captured fully in the moment. 

My “Why” is to ensure that each person I do a session for has memories to last not only a lifetime but that can be passed on to the generations to come.