Hardly a year ago, I met this beautiful little family in my studio for their baby girl's newborn session.
Baby Fallon was such a petite and dainty little girl with the most beautiful features, and I absolutely loved the gorgeous portraits that we created that day.
Inevitably, little Fallon has grown from newborn to a spunky little 1-Year-Old, and I was so excited to see her and her parents again for a Fall Family Session! (Okay, maybe it was late summer, but Calgary hardly knows the difference sometimes).
It's always such a huge compliment when clients come back for more photos; I love seeing how families grow and change over the years, and creating portraits for them that perfectly capture and document these changes is such a true joy for me.
Sometimes it tugs at my heartstrings; being a mother myself, I am always so proud to watch my children grow and turn into the people they will be one day. But a part of my heart just wishes time would slow down a little bit, and that they could stay little for just a while longer. It all happens so quickly; and while it doesn't immediately feel like it day to day, one day you wake up and think to yourself, "where has the time gone?"
Some days, my kids wake up and they just look... different. There's something that's changed literally overnight, like some sort of fairy came through and pulled at their legs some and added some height, or sculpted their face to be just a smidge more mature-looking than it did the day before.
When that happens, I like to pull my kids into the studio for a quick portrait (much to their refusal and eye-rolling) but for myself, that's just how I hold onto the moment for forever. I'm a sucker for pictures; and not just snapshots. I love flipping through an album or walking by our photo wall to stop and smile at what once was. To appreciate now, but also reminisce on what used to be.
I adore photos that have a smile finding the corners of your mouth; they're usually the shots that capture interactions and those genuine little moments. Those in-betweeners where we didn't really know the camera was snapping away and capturing those little details.
I always try to encourage parents to get a couple of portraits of themselves, too. Not only for ourselves but for when our kids are older and grown. I love looking at old photos of my parents when they were my age.
I stumbled across a portrait of my Mother-In-Law & Father-In-Law once and didn't even recognize them. They laughed and said, "yes, we used to be young, too!" and it really opened my mind for that moment, because yes, they were! I've only known them for the last 10 years, and hardly considered what they might have been like when my husband was in diapers and I, myself, was off in my own little life with my parents. It's almost like a little adventure of its own and brings an appreciation to the circle of life that we all take part in.
Life, as we know it today, might be entirely different tomorrow; we never know what life will throw at us and we take it for granted. We assume tomorrow will be just like it was today even though we know deep in our hearts that could very much be not true.
We had our own family photos done earlier this year; and while I would have honestly preferred a Fall Session, it dawned on me that I had NO idea what might happen in the months leading up to our session (you can never be sure!) and we ended up booking our session for last spring, and I'm so glad we did! My kids have grown so much and we would have missed out on the moments THEN if we had waited for now.
You only get to experience a moment once.
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