I have blogged before about lifestyle sessions and why I love them. This post gives you another perspective - the client's point of view and why they decided to do a lifestyle session in their home. A special thank you to my client for your detailed and beautiful account of our session. As a mom of three myself, I connect with your desire to capture these fleeting, beautiful and messy moments. I think you sum it up best when you say, "It is also the kind of busy that makes us scream and cry in nearly the same breath." Take a moment to read J's story below.
Life with three boys is the best BUSY we have ever been. It is the kind of busy that makes us laugh as we watch our boys create new adventures in our not-so-new backyard hold our breath as they climb higher in that tree and sigh as they get mud all over their clothes again. It is also the kind of busy that makes us scream and cry in nearly that same breath.
Unfortunately, it is NOT the kind of busy that allows us to whip out our expensive digital camera and our fancy lenses to capture each fleeting moment. This is why we finally decided to let someone else come do that for us, and we are so glad that we did. The memories Sarah was able to capture for us in our Lifestyle/Family session are us. They are our everyday joys of reading and doing puzzles together...
They are the hours our boys spend collecting “watermelon acorns”
They are our 2-year-old’s obsession with kissing his 5 week old brother...
They are the colors of our home, the flowers we planted on the front porch this year,
and the knit hat that grandma made. They are my frizzy hair getting pulled back in a ponytail half way through the morning, as I set our 5-week old on the counter to put away the snacks the boys pulled out...
They are Sarah windexing our windows, climbing up on her step ladder, and introducing
our boys to a new game of “hotter and colder”. They are the reality of a cloudy, cool Sunday that
doesn’t scream “picture day”, but somehow this doesn’t matter.
Unfortunately, the things we will never fully be able to capture in photos are the everyday SOUNDS of their tiny newborn grunts as they try to tell us they are tired or hungry, their high-pitched giggle as they balance a book on their head
their tiny little voices exclaiming “come see this! come see this!”
or their frustrated outburst as they demonstrate that they just don’t want to listen anymore
(amongst all of the other boy noises that come out of these littles!).
But, maybe, just maybe, if we capture enough images of the everyday moments, those feelings
of simple joy, unexpected humor, overflowing love, and complete chaos will come flooding back to us as we use these images to guide our memories in years to come.
Yes, hiring a professional photographer was all of this for us, crammed into a couple of hours. Thank you, Sarah, for helping us to preserve all of this.
