On the Changes You Don’t See Coming – Kitsap Documentary Family Photographer

Late last summer a friend of mine suggested starting a group photography project about only children. Being as I was massively pregnant with our daughter at the time I wished her luck with the project and mentioned that I wouldn’t be the parent of an only child for much longer so… Then, a mutual friend suggested I start a personal project capturing my son’s last bit of time as an only child.

Now, here’s the thing; I suck a projects like this. These on the side, pick them up and put them back down, projects where the only person I’m accountable to is myself are always a complete bust for me. I need a schedule, a plan, and a few other people to make sure I get it done. But in this case I had an external deadline (the birth of our second child) and I could sit down and plan out a few things that would be important for me to shoot. So I consciously started thinking of all the little one on one rituals my son and I had that I would want to make sure were documented for posterity. As I started to create this list (playing trains, our lunches together, grocery store trips, etc.) I started to realize I already had photos of all these things since I had been documenting a personal day in the life every month.

The arguably crummy thing about documentary family photography is a certain amount of it’s value is dependent on faith. Faith that one day you will look back with wistfulness and nostalgia on events that are common place or even moments you feel you could totally go without (tantrums & time outs, anyone?) But here I was on the precipice of our family dynamic being upended in a permanent way and it gave me the clarity to see how truly precious these monthly collections of images were at a time when, to be totally honest, the motivation to make them was severely lacking.

Now our daughter is here and mostly settled into life on the outside. She certainly has brought us so much joy and is clearly a personality that was previously missing from our little family.  But I have to admit seeing these photos makes me yearn again for the days of just him and I; our leisurely mornings together and our little adventures while running errands.

I can’t quite thing of a better example of why documentary images of your family are so important. Life is nothing but change and even if all our changes are as positive as having another child, moving to a bigger house, or your kids entering a prestigious college, you are still never going to know they day that he quits insisting that he feeds the pets. And once that day comes all the money in the world won’t turn back the clock – but at least I have a picture of it.

So maybe you shoot a day in the life regularly, maybe you start a 365 project, maybe you make a point to hire a photographer to capture some moments for you, or maybe you simply make a habit of leaving your camera where you can grab it at a moments notice; just shoot your now and shoot it now, shoot it now, shoot it now.