05/21/2026
Well, I have a wonderful gallery waiting for me from today’s session.
But before I disappear into culling and editing, there were a few things from today that stayed with me, and while they’re still fresh I wanted to put them somewhere.
Amanda came into the studio today with her daughters, Katelyn and Olivia, and their little girls. Three generations in one room.
I love multi-generational sessions for exactly this reason.
You walk in thinking you’re photographing people.
And then somewhere between changing groupings, moving babies around, finding the missing shoe, and convincing a toddler that picture day is not in fact the worst thing that has ever happened to them, you realize you’re really photographing how a family functions.
Today looked a lot like real life.
About 45% toddlers hating picture day.
About 25% those same toddlers loving the camera and wanting to inspect every image on the back of it.
The remaining percentage dedicated entirely to off-camera chaos.
And while all of that was happening, I kept noticing these wonderful women in front of me.
One daughter stepping into portraits with Mom while the other sat on the floor with the girls.
A baby passed from one set of arms to another.
Someone reaching for snacks.
Someone distracting.
Someone helping.
Then they switched.
It happened so naturally I don’t even think they realized how magical it was.
There was no discussion about whose turn it was.
No keeping score.
No pause to figure out who needed to do what next.
Just this quiet rhythm of women who have loved each other long enough that helping has become second nature.
I think that stuck with me because toddler years are hard.
Beautiful, yes.
But hard.
When your child is overwhelmed, your body goes on alert. You’re trying to help them regulate while also feeling every pair of eyes around you. Trust me, there are few things that raise my stress level faster than my own child deciding the middle of somewhere public is the perfect place to completely unravel.
So if you’ve ever come into a session worried your toddler won’t “behave,” I need you to know this:
This is a safe space. A motherhood space.
It is a space for curiosity.
For wandering.
For the toddler who suddenly decides they hate photos.
For the one who becomes deeply invested in my camera.
It is okay to play Ms. Rachel. It's ok to put that phone against my forehead and hold it so the baby looks "at" the camera.
It is okay to keep the binky. We'll try again in a few minutes to see if baby is ok without the binky then.
It is okay to stop and say, “We need five minutes.” You know what I'm going to do? I'll make the best use of our time together and pivot to another grouping, or we just simply take a break entirely!
Because literally no one's child behaves for photoshoots. In my years of doing this, it's never happened for an entire session. Ever. Every single one of the above situations happened today.
And we still created beautiful images.
But beyond the images themselves… I keep thinking about what this turns into.
What it becomes.
Maybe one of these portraits from today hangs in Gigi’s home.
Maybe it sits between photographs of the girls as they grow bigger and older. School pictures. Senior portraits someday. Maybe wedding photos years from now. Maybe new babies added to the family tree.
And maybe one day someone stops in front of it.
Not because they're thinking about who cried, or how the day felt a little chaotic...
But because they remember this version of life, where the girls still fit on laps, and Gigi, daughters, and grandbabies all stood together in one frame.
Maybe someone says, “Look how little she was.”
Maybe someone smiles and says, “I forgot we did that together.”
Or maybe it’s quieter than that. Maybe it's a mom who recalls how she just got off a night shift at the ER, and thinking “I remember feeling taken care of.”
Because sometimes the photograph isn’t the memory.
Oftentimes, it's the feeling that photograph evokes.
The feelings... the values... the core identity that became your family's history when you took the time to preserve them. Cheesy? Maybe. But it's true.
Alright... enough thinking. Time to get back to processing these. ☺️
