At Home with Robert
I’ve been sitting on this session for quite some time. Sweet Robert is no longer a 10-month, mostly-bald baby boy. Nowadays he’s running around with a gorgeous head of the blondest curls— a fully-fledged toddler!
Blogging takes a lot of time, and when my business is especially busy with sessions, editing, and the ins and outs of daily routine, it can easily be put off. I know a lot of photographers have stopped blogging altogether, and in general, it’s not quite as popular as it once was with creatives. Instagram, IG Stories, and Facebook albums are quick and easy to put together and digest.
However, I have been blogging in one form or another online since I was 15/16 years old, beginning with Live Journal. This was before it was even called blogging! It’s something that I can step away from time to time but ultimately always return to.
I don’t claim to be a particularly good writer, but I do enjoy writing. I especially like to share about the people I meet and the experiences I have with them through my photography business. All that being said, I am trying to get better with consistency. Five and a half years into my business I still have a lot to learn, a lot to do better, and a lot to continue working towards, and blogging is on all those lists.
A part of me feels like I can’t properly call myself a storyteller without this aspect of my business. Yes, my photos can offer a visual narrative, but when paired with words, I feel things are more intimate and offer a little more context of the lives of the people I am photographing.
It’s no secret that my preferred style of photography is mostly journalistic in approach, and I really want to move towards showcasing these types of lifestyle sessions. They are where I feel I come alive and where some of my most personally rewarding work is born from.
Don’t get me wrong— I am a fan of beautiful looking-at-the-camera portraits. Everyone loves and deserves to look gorgeous and happy. For me though, when I look at photos, I want to feel something. Even if the photo has nothing to do with me, I want what I look at to conjure emotions, instant nostalgia; I want to have a visual experience. In a world where we are constantly fed a steady steam of images, I want a photograph to slow my scroll.
Photographs don’t have to be complicated. When I first began my business I was really interested in wowing people by how interesting my images could be. It was about what I could do, not necessarily who my clients were. I hate to admit that, but, now that I’ve been in business for almost six years, I feel a lot more comfortable discussing how I’ve grown, what I’ve learned, and the mistakes I’ve made.
Maybe it’s maturing, perhaps it’s aging. At 35, I yearn for simplicity. I am not chasing a desire to be seen, to have the attention I used to seek. More than anything, being in business has shined a spotlight on what ultimately matters most to me: my family. When I began to travel, I understood how very deep the well my love and devotion to them is. Over time my business has evolved to become a means of being with them more rather than allowing me the freedom I thought I needed. It’s funny how it’s all worked out. I was desperate to get outside of my world, and now all I want to do is retreat into it and hold onto it with every ounce of my being.
Perhaps this is why I love this session so much. As a mother to teenagers, I now look back and realize that it was never the BIG moments that made the lasting impact on me. It’s the everyday. Bath time routines, the way my babies would look into my eyes when they were drinking milk; the toys on the floor, dishes in the sink. These were— and are— signs of a life well lived. It’s the extraordinary ordinary, and I encourage you to take as many photos as you can of those moments, because they are precious, and they are gone far too quickly.
Being Facebook friends with Whitney, seeing just how much Robert has changed, I am so grateful that her husband reached out to me to gift this session to her for her birthday. It was a session that was relaxed and celebrated the time in their lives exactly as it was.
