- storytellerphotoak
- Aug 11, 2021
- 2 min read
As I was doing a shoot last night with my sister's family last night, my nephew kept asking (in every way possible) "are we done yet? are we done YET? are we DONE yeeeettttt?" Then he asked the question that he really wanted to ask - "why do we have to take so many pictures." I of course flippantly told him it was because his aunt was trying to start a photography business and I needed his lovely face to be a model and because his mother wanted to have some nice pictures to put around the house. But then I started thinking - why do we take so many pictures. For me, the answer is they tell our story. They tell our story without words and capture who we are in a still moment. The gleam in an eye, the furled brow, the curled up lip, the rolling laughter. For these reasons, I like to snap the moments in between the posed pictures. These are the moments that tell that story of who we are and capture "us." I love seeing the true person come out in the picture. I mean, I also love the perfectly posed shots too, where the family looks so nicely put together, but it is something special to see the way a family interacts with one another caught for just an instance but also for an eternity. And then caught again the next year, and the next, and to see how that love grows and changes over time. Or to see how a little baby boy grows into a bouncing kid that can't be contained to a full grown teenaged man ready to take on the world.
Eventually, all of these images tie together to become the story in your mind that create memories. There are pictures from my childhood that I can't find anymore but I can recall them distinctly - washing the car with my grandma or sitting on my grandpa's lap in a bright red Christmas dress. I wouldn't remember those things without the pictures I looked at so many times that they have now etched themselves into my mind. And that for me is why we take so many pictures. They help us remember where we came from and where we are going. Photos really are our storybook without words.
