If you are like me, you have come up with every excuse for not getting your family photographs taken. The excuses range from not having time to not having anything to wear to needing my hair done to cover up the gray that is outing my age. But as they say, time flies and those gray hairs are not going to stop sprouting. (My struggles with gray hair should be a whole blog post itself…) But if there is ever something that does motivate folks to get that family portrait done, it is that yearly holiday card. But the true value of your family portraits extent well beyond the Christmas cheer brought by the annual picture postcard.
- It will not be this way forever – Nothing is forever. This time in life, whether it be a wonderful time or a difficult time, will eventually pass. Take the photograph anyhow. Looking back a photographs of good times may bring a smile to your face or cause the family to laugh at that funny memory reflected in the photograph. My boys and I are constantly laughing and retelling the great times reflected through the photographs we see on the digital picture frame in our dining room. But even the photographs during the harder times can enrich our lives by reminding us how far we have come, what we were able to endure and remind us to be thankful for those happier times when they do come around.

- People change, move on and leave us – Children grow up and lose their baby teeth, their fine baby hair and curls and sometimes those adorable and shifty dimples. I love looking back on the photos of my boys when they were younger. Those little features I thought I had memorized during those middle-of-the-night feedings somehow slipped from my memory until I see them again while scrolling through old photos on my phone. And even adults change, gaining or losing weight, losing (but not gaining) hair. My boys love looking at old photos of their dad and me, commenting on how we have changed through the years. In fact, they love looking at photographs of themselves when they were younger! This always spurs questions about what they were like as a baby or toddler. And life not only is precious but also unpredictable. As I get older, I come to learn of more and more friends and acquaintances who have family members who have died, have become unexpectedly disabled or terminally ill. A photograph is one of the few things in life that become more valuable the older it gets as life events take us or change us. I had a friend who died within eighteen months of learning she had cancer. She left a young child behind who will always love his mother but will struggle to remember her as he gets older. The photographs he has of his mother are one of the few things that can bring him closer to his mother. Years ago, my sister gave birth to severely premature twins. They died a few hours later because the wonders of modern medicine were just not wonderous enough to save them. A photographer came to the hospital to take photographs of the twins, and those photos are the most precious treasures my sister can hold onto.
- Photos serve as historians for future generations – I have relatives I have not met in person but I feel as if I know them anyhow because I see them, their personalities, the things they loved to do in the family photo albums. I see where I get my features when I look into the eyes of the people who gave me my family name and DNA. When I got married, I wanted to know my husband’s family. I learned a lot through his family’s photos. These photographs served as the records, not written word, but pictures, of my family’s story and my husband’s family story which we are passing down to our children.

- Photos can reflect our relationships, love and connections – Not only do our appearances change, but our relationships do as well, for better or worse. I have a blended family. My husband has a son from his prior marriage, and that son is an important part of our family. We do not shy away from discussing my husband’s prior life with my young sons because that is part of our story. I have preserved all the photos from his life prior to our family because that is all a part of our story and makes us who we are. My young sons do not share the same mother with their older brother, and they curiously inspect those old photos, asking questions about their brother’s mother and where he came from. They need to know life may not be neat or perfect and may not go as originally planned, but it can still be just as fulfilling. Furthermore, my two young sons have vastly different personalities. When my twelve year old was only one year old, we had a family photo session. I picked him up to kiss him and he pushed me away, his face straining to get away from me and the kiss I wanted to plant on his cheek. But that was my son’s personality – always on the run and not content to hold still even for a kiss from mama. A few years later when my youngest was one, we also had family photos done. There is one photo from that session where I am holding my youngest and gently kissing his cheek while he just stares wide-eyed at the camera. That photo captured his quiet personality at the time perfectly. Both these photos, from different times and of different children, are counted as some of my favorite possessions – I love placing them next to each other to see the dramatic differences in my children. Their personalities were apparent even as early as one year old. And I take every opportunity I can, which is usually spurred on by seeing a photo, to tell them about their unique and lovable personality traits that make them exactly who they should be in this life.

Don’t get me wrong, Christmas cards are a wonderful thing to have and share. But the Christmas cards are just an unintended benefit of my family’s photos. I want the portraits I take to become a treasured record of my family – past, present and future. Family photos should serve as your family’s visual time capsule, freezing those everyday moments into enduring and extraordinary memories.
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