Exist in Photos

We live in a time where we casually record every, tiny detail of our lives and share them with the world in real time. Our trips, our meals, our belongings, our kids, our pets, our experiences all end up online. Something is missing from this list, though. Where are we? There is an entire generation (or two) of us who revel in sharing everything with everyone, but stop short of including ourselves in any of it.

Let’s change that. I would like you to agree to be professionally photographed. As you are. Now.

Not in 6 months’ time, when you’ve reached your goal weight. Regardless of the fact that you feel that you look like a bulldog/a hippopotamus/a hundred years old/overtired/hideous etc. Yes, they are growing fast, but this is not an offer to photograph your children, instead of you.

I have heard every one of the above reasons for people to avoid being photographed. A lot of these descriptions come from my own family. Beloved, smart and beautiful people.  Full disclosure: I am not immune to this issue myself. My handy excuse is that as a photographer, I am always behind the camera. Ha! The last time that I was photographed on purpose was at my wedding in 2007! So, I put my money where my mouth is, and did a short self-portrait session. You will see one of those images on my About Carole page.

Step outside of yourself for a second and think about what it means to be absent in photographs.

There are years of my family’s life together that are almost entirely undocumented in photographs. Life was so busy. We didn’t own a working camera at the time. I looked awkward. My mom was over-worked and over-tired and didn’t want to be recorded looking that way. We essentially didn’t exist in photos!

I would love to be able to revisit those times and show my husband and our future kids what my family and I looked like back then. We made incredible memories together, and had great times despite our hectic schedules.

Our families won’t go through our Instagram feeds to lovingly linger over phone pictures of our meals, when we are far from home. If you lose a family member, you don’t search out pictures of the craft projects they put on Facebook.

I have this photography fairy godmother, named Sue Bryce – and her words inspired me to get up on my soap box today.  We are all good enough as we are, and deserve to celebrate the here and now. Let’s #existinphotos together.