This is something I posted on facebook a couple weeks ago on the evening of this session.

This was from tonight’s session. I have plenty of adorable shots of this cute kid, but I chose to put this one on here for a reason. See this cute kid is my nephew. My nephew who I see all the time. I see his eyes turn into little sideways moon shapes whenever he laughs hard because his big cheeks make it so he can’t keep them open. I got a couple photos that capture that smile that causes those chubby cheeks to squish his eyes closed (thank goodness because it is insanely cute). But I decided to put this one on here because it wasn’t until I was going through the photos that I noticed how old he has gotten. That baby face isn’t so babyish anymore. When you see someone so often you don’t notice how much they change. This is why it’s so important to take the time to get photos taken of your kids because they change so much and so fast that you might not even notice that it’s happening. Just like I didn’t until I was looking at my nephew through my camera lens.
But really it shouldn’t just be your kids in the photos. You need to get in those photos too. Get your whole family in the photo. Have photos taken of the whole family so you can remember what it was like when you all were in this moment. Randomly I had two different friends tell me today that they needed to book family sessions soon. One told me that she wanted to book family photos because she didn’t have any and they now have three daughters. She was always waiting until she lost the baby weight but then would get pregnant with the next baby and would pushed it off. Another friend said she had been putting together a photo album for her father and realized she didn’t have any photos of her family of four. She has ones of her daughters (her girls are all over my website) and she’s even in one but only because I made her get in a couple of the shots but they don’t have ones of the whole family. You don’t want to let these moments go by without having them documented. So take the time to have your family photographed!
Now Jackie boy, your CeeCee would appreciate it if you would slow down on the growing up. And if you could tell your cousins to do so too I would very much appreciate it! But if you can’t then at least we’ll be able to remember what things were like by looking at our well documented photos.

A few days after their session I was watching the amazing Sue Bryce in a webinar.  She was talking about a similar subject and I loved the way she put it into these simple words…“Exist in photographs for your children.”  Perfect!