Do you exist in your family’s photo album? Do you put yourself in front of the camera with your kids and your husband? Where are the photographs that include you and your parents? How about the best friend? I am a photographer. I can tell you all day long why it is so important for you to exist in images for yourself and those that love you. I can also tell you the many excuses I myself have had for not existing in pictures. I need to lose weight. I am not happy with my haircut. I don’t like my smile. I am not wearing the right outfit. The list could go on for pages I am sure. Let’s take time to reflect though on each of these excuses, do any of them matter to our children, our parents, our spouses, our best friends? They don’t, I promise.

I have realized over the past few years that I too can no longer make excuses, my children, my grandchildren deserve to know I existed through photographs. Someday I want them to proudly and fondly talk about the experience that exists in those images. A single image can bring back a smile, a scent, a forgotten moment and we should be there for that.

After 7 years of photographing other families I have had the pleasure of capturing HUGE moments in other’s lives; weddings, births, graduations and beyond. I have also had the honor to capture families as they prepare to say final goodbyes to their loved ones, as they hope for final memories and photographs that memorialize their connections. Photographs really are a road map that tell the story of where we have been, who was with us and what did that experience feel like. As a professional photographer I of course want you to book those family sessions, make sure to capture your babies when they are little with a professional but I also hope you consider the story you leave behind. The one that your children can lay out on the floor and giggle over, the one that you can tell an entire weekend’s adventures in, the ones that capture your family’s dynamics.

Do you exist in your family’s photo album? Make a challenge today to take a goofy selfie with your little ones, book a session where someone else is peeking in from the outside, print an image to place on your desk at work. These are not only your moments and memories but are the future conversations of loved ones.