Getting in the shot

 

From the moment my children were born, I have been driven to photograph them.  I love capturing the quiet moments of every day life as well as each milestone we share as they grow up.  I have pictures of the first time Sarah rode her bike without training wheels, Cooper's first smile, and everything in between.  I cherish these photos more than anything I own.  But, with the thousands of pictures I've taken, the one thing I haven't always been very good about is getting Lance and me in the pictures.  In fact, I've been known to work hard to avoid being in the pictures and it's not unusual for me to ask Lance to step back so I don't miss the perfect shot. I've been almost singularly focused on capturing them.  

 

However, as I was going through some old pictures from my childhood this weekend, I began to realize that I have been missing something pretty important in the way I have been documenting this time in our lives--I haven't been thinking about it from the right perspective.  Instead, I take pictures of the things I want to remember.  Don't get me wrong--these are important images to capture for sure. However, as I was looking through old photos of myself as a child, it became so clear to me that the pictures I treasure most from the perspective of an adult looking back in time at my own childhood weren't those of me riding a bike or playing at the park.  Instead, I was captivated by pictures of my parents and pictures of me with my parents and grandparents.  There is something so affirming to see the love and joy on my mom's face as she held me in her lap.  Or, how happy my dad was to spend the day carrying me around on his shoulders at the zoo.  I breezed past several pictures of me splashing around in a wading pool, only to stop and linger for a long time over an identical image with my mom sitting beside me.  Seeing her look at me like that, the way I look at Sarah and Cooper, means so much to me now.  It is the emotion that comes through these images that I treasure the most and what I know I must preserve for Sarah and Cooper.  It's not easy for me to want to be on the other side of a camera lens most days, but knowing how important these kinds of pictures will be to them has motivated me to let go of my own insecurities and just get in the shot.