Photography by Alison, San Diego Family photographer

I took a little break from the blogging world in 2012.  I was at the point that I was just posting shoots and there was really no substance taking place.  So, I pretty much stopped.  This last month of 2012, I have really been thinking about what I want my blog to be and even if I want to blog.  I also needed to get to a place where my “I should”, turned into “I want to”.  And I really want to now.  I have looked at what it actually does for me and I will describe that as I go below.

Lots has changed in 2012.  Nothing that you can see physically or that I can describe in one post unless I tell the whole story.  But in a nutshell, I am just becoming more conscious of what I care about and if what I say I care about actually matches how I spend my time and energy.  I can say I care about my kids as numero uno!  But if my time, energy, quality of conversation, interest, etc doesn’t match how much I say I care about them… what good is “saying” it to them except to make me feel like I am a good mom.   This applies to many areas of my life… health, home, myself, relationships, business, etc.     It is a kind of a life game changer for me and is making me re-look at every aspect of my life.

This next year, I plan on really looking at what brings meaning and satisfaction to my life and concentrating more on those things and eliminating the things that are fluff and filler .   One of the big things is my photography business.  I’ve gone through many phases with building my business… some really hard, some really great.  One of the aspects that I kind of lost sight of was my purpose for being a family photographer.  I’ve mentioned it on this blog before but several years ago there was one family in the early days of my business that I photographed several months after they brought their premature baby boys home from an extensive stay in the hospital.  They were such a joy to photograph with their babies.  They had endured some pretty intense months while their babies developed and grew and they were just so thrilled and raw with emotion to have their twins home.  It was then during that shoot that I knew I wanted to concentrate on family photography.  I wanted to capture that raw, beautiful emotion between child and parent all the time.

That was about 6 years ago.  Nothing has changed with what I love about family photography.  I still consider myself very adept at capturing the relationships between everyone in the family.  I always gravitate towards the images of a sweet glance between a parent and their child.  Or the pure joy of the children racing their parents on the beach.  I do my best to create these scenes so that the magic that I love between people has it’s best shot at being captured.   Often times this is more contrived than I want it to be.  And sometimes it’s just there and easy to facilitate.  But I lost sight of my drive to capture the realness.  I got caught up in offering what I thought my clients wanted rather than what I wanted to offer.  It’s not that I have been offering something bad… it’s just not what I love and what drives me.

Over the last six years, I have gone through several purposes and motivations for doing what I do… not all of them fulfilling.  Sometimes I have been into my photography to get the coolest image that my peers would love and think I’m a pretty awesome photographer.  Sometimes it’s been to appease a family or give them what I “think” they want.  Sometimes it’s just been money or the business game.  The holiday photo rush is difficult for me because everyone just wants that perfect image to send to their family and friends which I totally get, it’s just not my preference.  But, this gives me a contrast as well for what I really love and want to offer vs what is necessary for a given time frame.  Now that I am being more clear with everyone’s expectations, it’s easier for me to deal with and give what is wanted at the time.

The perfect family photos to me, are capturing the different aspects of the relationships in a family.  I’d like to not limit it to just the fun, carefree, sweet emotions captured.  I’d like to capture the tender moments of sadness, longing, thoughtful moments of understanding, consoling, boredom … whatever is happening throughout our time together.  And for those images to be cherished just as much as that perfect smiley face one…. not just cherished by me.  You really can’t imagine your kids as anything but kids.

Now I have teenagers and seeing them as the little kids they were is impossible without photos or video.  I know that any image that captured all of their little details are by far my favorite photos.  It could be as simple as a stance,  a goofy smile that only happened at age seven, or their clothing choices or even an image that is caught on the sly that encapsulates their personality perfectly.  But those little nuances speak volumes about that time… not just the perfect smile in the perfect clothes with her perfectly parted.

Over the years of my business, I have been able to fine tune what I think my clients want as well as what I can offer.  I have found that the more time I am able to spend with a family, the better chance I have at creating the space to record the full gamut of emotions and interactions.  I’ve tried to fit that into a 20 minute mini session because it’s what I love about photography but it just can’t be done effectively and I’ve expected myself to be able to do just that for several years.  I also know that not everyone wants that.  They want updated images that represent their family for that time of their lives with everyone smiling at the camera.  I want that sometimes too.  I can totally respect that desire.  So with the new year comes a little readjusting on my part for how my sessions will go.  I have created sessions based on time and budget and what is captured.  My own expectations are finally in check with what each session type offers and it’s given me a new outlook on my role with family photo sessions.

One of the things that has helped shape my current thinking is looking back at my old blog posts from 2005.  I remember being excited to think about what was meaningful in my day and what I would write about.  I really thought I was quite funny (and still do)… and if I am the only one that thinks I am funny, I am totally ok with that.  Looking back, I can see that I had a sense of joy with my own wit.  I also looked back at my old sessions from my beginning days and looked at the creativity I put into many of those sessions.  I had that creative energy of learning and trying new things along with the nervousness and hoping I didn’t screw everything up.  What came out of those early sessions was some really endearing images.

The last couple of years I feel like I have lost some of that zest and often shoot on automatic.   I think what has actually changed is that I now have an ‘auto mode’ (the luxury of mastering something).   I still actually do creative images.   But I have figured out that I need to rely on my tried and true poses sometimes.  And it’s ok.  Not everything can or has to be new and exciting.  I can and do get creative and energized with my longer sessions.

This all circles back to my purpose and motivation for a family photography business.  One of my purposes is to help families document a part of their life in a creative and meaningful way.  It’s why I love albums so much.  It’s something tangible that holds a piece of their story.  I love being able to include the images where the kids are having so much fun playing with their parents on the beach that every picture has some goofy face.  Or the one with the lovey or dingy blanket that can’t be let go of and doesn’t seem to leave the story until half way through our session when the shyness finally wears off (and not because it was removed for the sake of the perfect pictures).  One of my motivations for offering this is because it’s what I would want and I am pretty sure I am not the only one who wants this.  What I do know is that it’s not very easy to create well and if I can be the person to help create that… it brings me so much joy.

So that is my plan for the new year with my business.  That plan has actually always been there but it’s been vague and undefined.  I also plan on blogging again… like I did in the beginning.  I loved that it made me think and recall my days and made me even more conscious of creating my days and what went into my days.  I miss that.  I let my life get a little cluttered with nothing (that’s actually possible) and I plan on changing that.  No more post after post of family sessions.  That obviously wasn’t very fulfilling since I dropped it over a year ago.  I’m not sure how it will all go down but I do plan on being more aware and I am hoping, more  thoughtful with my blogging.  I think it will take me a bit to hone my writing skills which aren’t very good in the first place.  But that’s a learning process too.

And because blog posts are always great with photos (especially the wordy ones), here is the most recent photo from the Smith family who I love to photograph.   I can’t even tell you how much I love this image.   It’s the perfect representation of their lives that very day.