I wish they'd known what I do

What if family photography was real instead of curated.

I was chatting with someone this week. Someone I know a little, but not all too well really. The chat was casual, talking about kids and summer of course. Then she told me she had just wrapped up hosting her whole family for their yearly reunion. In fact her entire family descends on her house every summer and hangs out for a weekend.

But she told me about how the gatherings are changing. Kids are growing up. Some of the older kids don’t come every year now. She looked a bit nostalgic.

"It's different," she said.

I wish she had known I do what I do.

I told her that next year she needed - yes I used the word needed - to have me come shoot her family reunion.

“What? That’s possible?” She had no idea it was.

"Oh yes, it is," I said, "and it’s amazing."

Because family photography doesn’t have to be matching outfits on a beach. It doesn’t even need to be parents and kids!

Those tea dates with grandma.

The family campout.

The annual fishing trip.

Or this pit stop on a long road trip where kids found a tide pool, jumped in, fished a crab, and for an hour parents caught their second wind.

What’s more beautiful than this family photography?

The family moments we cherish are not the ones where everyone is posed and smiling. They’re the in-between ones: how your uncle throws his head back when he laughs, the inside jokes between siblings, the chaos of kids running feral until someone finally bursts into the kitchen with a bloody knee.

Those are the things you want to remember. Because the truth is, the reunions won’t look the same forever. Kids grow, grandparents age, and sadly, people pass. The traditions stay—but the people in them are always changing.

Family photography can be a way to press pause. Not on the “perfect” family, but on the real version of yours—the one you try to bottle up in your heart to remember when you look back years from now.

So if your family has a reunion, or a summer tradition, or even just a weekend where everyone finally makes it under one roof—know this: you can have it documented. You can have photographs that show the heart of your family.

And one day, you’ll be so glad you did.