What is a Day In the Life Documentary Family Photo Session?
When people hear me say that I am a documentary family photographer, they often seemed rather intrigued yet confused.
What do you mean by documentary? Like lifestyle family photos or...?
What would people do with those photos? To share on their social media?
These are the very common questions I get whenever I mention documentary photography, so let's talk about —
What is a Documentary Family Photo Session Exactly?
Documentary adjective
2: of, relating to, or employing documentation in literature or art
broadly : FACTUAL, OBJECTIVE
Documentary noun
: a presentation (such as a film or novel) expressing or dealing with factual events : a documentary presentation
As you can see from the definition of documentary, the intention of documentary photography is to present the factual, objective reality. To put this in the family life setting, what a documentary family photo session does is to preserve your current stage of life in the most honest way. Then in 10, 20, 50 years, when your grandchildren or even great grand children all snuggled up on the couch around you flipping through these photos, you get to tell them all the stories behind each image. And you can proudly say to them:
Documentary family photography is an approach that focuses on capturing authentic, unposed, and meaningful moments in a family's everyday life.
Preserving What Matters in 30 Years:
As nice as it is to have your family to dress up and look all put together and send out perfect Christmas cards or get tons of likes on social media, as a mom, your days are filled with a myriad of moments that might seem ordinary but are undoubtedly significant. The soft morning light streaming through the curtains, your child's gleeful exploration of the backyard, the shared laughter during storytime - these are the treasures that make up the fabric of your family's story.
And let’s be honest, life is never all rainbow and unicorns. Life can get tough and we have to manage those days as well. The moment when we get through a way less picture pretty day empowers us as moms and it becomes absolutely beautiful. And the harder moments are worthy of a good documentation as well. After all, this is real life we are talking about.
Imagine yourself in 30 years, would you want to only remember how your family looked or would you rather remember what it felt like to be in your family at a certain point of life?
A Stress-Free and Enjoyable Experience:
How many of you and your spouse would immediately go into stress or even panic mode when the phrase “family photo“ is mentioned?
For anyone, unless you are a professional model, formal photo shoots can often become overwhelming and tiring, resulting in forced smiles and restless moods. Now we have to add on the stress of coordinating nap and meal schedules for younger children, hoping that the weather cooperates, and figuring out how to get everyone on board to wear this brand new outfit while they only want to wear t-shirts with giant dinosaurs prints(or dad jokes). Of course, after all the extensive prep work — we are talking about all the mental load, actual time and money spent on clothes, hair and makeup — leading up to a formal portrait session, anyone would want everyone to look perfect and the session to go perfect. However, surprise surprise, the only thing certain about life is uncertainty. With this mentality, we totally set us up for stress and frustration when things don’t necessarily go as planned.
Documentary photographers understand that the best moments unfold organically, and with the mentality shift to focus on acknowledging all aspects of life being an important part in your family stories, anything happens during a photo session can be addressed by “yup, this is real life and life happens“. As a result, you can just be present, go with the flow and enjoy precious moments with your children, confident that the photographer will capture authentic memories that you will treasure for a lifetime. After all, you are not trying to make images to impress anyone else how perfect your life looks. You are creating core memories with the people you love the most and the photos are visual reminders for when your start to forget “what it felt like back then”.
Timeless Keepsakes for Future Generations:
Let’s do a reality check on how many photos you have that only lives on a hard drive or in your phone camera roll? How often do you go back and look at those photos?
Literally, pause for a second and go check the number of images on your phone and come back.
Documentary family photography provides you with timeless keepsakes that will be cherished by your family for generations to come. After the session, I create a slideshow with all the moments throughout the session and you get to put that video on the big screen at home and relive that day. Most of the families will create an album and everyone gets to flip through the pages and retell all those stories. Bonus, this becomes another family activity together — looking at all the photos from the years in the past and get to see how far you have come as a family.
