"It makes me see a whole new side to him now that he's a dad and, as cliche as it is...
...It's a whole other side for me to fall in love with."
She's talking about the way her husband is looking at their son. I'll go ahead and put this out there in case you're thinking it: yes, she probably does see him look at Oliver this way frequently. In fact, she was there when I took this photo.
She was there when I took this one, too:
But you know what she was doing? What all mothers do (especially new mothers). She was getting a diaper or clothes or a towel ready for Oliver, or taking advantage of having her arms free to do something around the house, or resting while her husband held their baby.
Even if she had been right there beside me, these photos would still be special to her.
Why? Because they froze time. They froze the love, the encouragement, the bravery, the pride, the dependency, the raw, the real. Even if she sees Cameron look at their son like this eighty times a day, those eighty times will begin to blur together. I know because my husband looks at our girls this way. I have to force myself to stop and notice it sometimes, because it becomes such a regular, normal thing.
And that's what I do: photograph the regular, normal things. The things that matter. The things that make your heart sing. The authentic moments you'll never forget, like your son's first bath, or your husband rocking him in your living room when he was just two weeks old, or the way your husband stared at him as if he were the most amazing thing ever created (because, well...he was).
And when I photograph them, I do so in a way that takes a regular, normal moment and transforms it into a representation of the heart that exists in that moment.
Time and time again, clients tell me that their sessions opened their eyes to things they never knew, never saw, never felt before.
Think about the last time that you looked at yourself or your life from the outside. I'm not talking about a selfie you took with your husband on date night, or a snapshot of your kids running around the back yard, or a photo you took for the annual family Christmas card using a remote timer and a tripod. None of those are accurate depictions of you or your life. And most times when a camera comes out, we tend to sit a little straighter, if you know what I mean.
The truth is, unless you've been photographed in your natural state by someone else, you haven't looked at yourself or your life from the outside.
This image (and the quote below it) is a perfect example:
"I look back at these pictures and I see things I hadn't before...like in the photo where I'm holding Oliver in the rocking chair and Cameron is playing guitar and Brynn is looking at the camera. I never knew that Cameron was smiling at us."
"I never knew that Cameron was smiling at us."
She would have had no way to know that Cameron was smiling at them. She was too busy loving on her little man!
She knows because of this photograph. A photograph that froze a moment when love radiated from her husband, when she was soaking up her first born's features, when they were basking in their new life as a family of four.
That photograph, and others like it, are what change your perspective. There is no filter, no facade. There is authenticity, truth, and sincerity. There is proof that you aren't normal, or bland, or just-the-average-American-family-doing-boring-things-on-Saturdays. There is a story--your story--and there are a million reasons you should tell it. Gaining perspective on how amazing that story is is just one of them.
