Why I Choose to Be A Documentary Family Photographer
Now I know, when my kids ask me in the future — “what was grandma like when we were younger?”
I can pull up this very image and say to my kids: Let me tell you a story, a true story!
A lot of people have asked me — why documentary? How did you get started in this genre?
Today I want to share with you why I chose to be a documentary family photographer and this one is truly from my heart.
Some of you might have known that my little family were visiting my parents in Wuhan, yes the epicenter, when Covid started there in 2020. I went to China as a lifestyle photographer with a giant shot list hoping to capture all these amazing photos I had envisioned. I had high hopes that I would be able to come home with lots of instagram worthy, award winning lifestyle photos. However, everyone knows what happened next— or rather, what never happened. Yeah, all those photos.
We were stuck in the little apartment of my parents, the 7 of us at the time. Winter in Wuhan is always cold and gloomy. I was mad that we couldn’t do anything outside of the home and I lost my chance to boost my business and go viral with my curated images.
I committed to a 365 photography project and I promised myself to take at least one photo each day with my big girl camera of my life. I kept photographing, but I did not want to look at any of the images let alone editing any of them because I thought nothing was good enough. There was no golden hour light, no cute little kiddo visiting giant panda, no big joyful moments.
Then everything changed when we all a sudden got a notification that we would be evacuated out of China. After a very chaotic week of packing and unpacking and packing and unpacking again, we were on board of the plane to come back to the US. That is when I realized that I just lost the chance to take another photo of my life in Wuhan under that very special circumstance.
After we made it to our quarantine center, I started to look through all the photos I had taken in Wuhan of my family because I totally felt that these would be the only things to hold onto now. As a matter of fact, I still haven’t been able to go back to visit my family and I have lost family members to covid during the past 4 years. Then I landed on this photo:
Initially when I took this photo, I just felt that I was spoiled because my mom was cooking and usually I am the one cooking for my family. My mom cooked for the 7 of us three meals a day every day, a feast every meal. Then when we were facetiming with my parents, they started to tell me that they had to count how many eggs they eat each week and they are sleeping in to have brunch to avoid having to eat 3 meals a day to make their grocery last longer. That’s when I realized that my mom literally drained her food storage so that my family could have a somewhat normal Chinese new year celebration.
I don’t think with the Chinese culture, me and my mom ever said “I love you“ out aloud to each other. However, when I look at this photo, there is zero doubt that this is the most unconditional love shown in the most humble way.
This is the moment when I realized that my real life is more than good enough.
This is why I now really want to dedicate my time to documenting real life. I do believe that real life is not always pretty but it is the most story we get to tell. I want to honor my real life now and I want to pay tribute to the real life I ignored back when I was in Wuhan.
What is your story? Do you have a story you wish you could have documented as a legacy?
transcript
00:28 Hi, my name is Amy Dangerfield, a documentary family photographer in phoenix. I am a mother of four children and I currently live in the amazing sunny phoenix Arizona i was born and raised in china
01:06 wuhan to be specifically and my grandma my mom's mom as you can see here she is a documentary film editor in china so growing up i always had a camera pointing at me as well documenting my life all my mischievous behaviors and all the funny moments and also just the day-to-day life my favorite thing
01:32 to do is just flipping through all the albums i have at home and asking my parents to tell me the story behind each photo and as you can see here this photo was taken when i was in preschool and and three of my grandparents went to pick me up from this end of the year performance i was all dawed up with
01:54 that crazy makeup and living my best life as the princess um walking home with ice cream in hand and oh my grandparents are carrying stuff for me this kind of little um details about life back then really draws me in and i love to listen to all the stories behind each story which being behind each image
02:21 now i have also been taking photos when i was little this was one of my first photos i've ever taken when i was four um i took this portrait for my parents when we were visiting beijing the capital city of china and of course i have been taking photos ever since and i have to say i've come a long way
02:44 and i met my husband in school when i came to study in arizona and the rest is history of course i have been documenting my life now that i have children and documenting their mischievous and funny moments and our day-to-day life i have also been trying to teach my children to use to be as a tool to
03:10 see the world a little differently and to express themselves artistically of course when i married to my husband and into this american culture i realized that it is the tradition here umm for people to send out christmas cards around holiday and i got into that habit and i have been taking family photos
03:33 for my own family for the past couple of years and i enjoy it because we get to dress up nicely and have a nice portrait to share with the rest of the family around the world and friends um this is our family what our family looks like this year and share some news with them and our appreciation so of
04:00 course when i started my business um this was what i tried to do to create beautiful family portraits for my clients but i am still more drawn to those candid moments so i found this genre which is called lifestyle photography so what happens is that essentially i will pick this location that looks amazing
04:26 beautiful and then we'll set our session time to be the golden hour so we can get these beautiful lights so right after sunset or right before sun um right after sunrise or right before sunset to get that golden glow and then we'll go to these locations and I will prompt my families into doing little
04:50 activities so um I can't get these amazing candid moments of course as a photographer ask cliche has the sound I start to use the tagline I am preserving your family memories your family history and I am telling your family stories so the more I have been creating these lifestyle images I felt the need
05:18 to live the way I have been creating these images right that's why it's called lifestyle photo shoots photo sessions I feel that I need to match this kind of lifestyle even though I know this is more of a created story for just that hour umm most of the time this would be my clients first time going
05:45 to the location and they usually dont dress up this way and they just saw their outfits the week before but still umm the more I created these images I felt that you know I probably should just live like I have been preaching umm and maybe it's just because my life is not um as polished as it should
06:13 be now if you know me um this is what my life looks like we lived in a very small house for a long time and with four children um especially during postpartum i actually just slept on the couch for a solid month to start with so i can get the rest of the family some rest and my husband can have the energy
06:39 during the day to take care of my older kids so this is nothing fancy it's way far away from you know letting the kids to go and play in the water in the river and just all in styled clothes this is more what our kids do just you know watching tv upside down so umm there is something missing deep down
07:09 or something that is off umm when i look at my life and the images that i have been creating or claiming to create for my clients that i am documenting their family story right?
07:22 uhh the most precious memories for them umm i start to doubt my ability as a mom as a wife or even just as a human being i felt that i was not doing enough i was not good enough i was not enough so that pushed me into a pretty sad place and i was trying to get out of it and my solution was essentially
07:51 to create an extended live cell session for myself and my family decided to take my family back to china to visit for chinese new year and i had great plants i ordered outfits matching outfits coordinating outfits and send them to my parents house and i had a gigantic shot list i wanted to take photos
08:17 of my grandma holding my baby you know the contrast of the wrinkled hand and the fresh baby hand and i was hoping to create all these contents that could potentially draw attention and then go viral and gain likes and gain followers and in my mind i will win so many awards because all these um very well 08:41 planned photo options right um however uh you know just never claim any year is your year i said to myself 2020 is going to be my year and there we went of course now everybody knows what happened or more i should say what never happened um five days after we landed in wuhan this gigantic city of 9 million
09:11 people at the time went into extreme strict lockdown initially we were still able to go to downstairs to take a walk around to get some quote unquote fresh air however very quickly the stress of trying to get all these young kids to apply with the mask band aids and keep social distance sensing and not
09:36 touching anything trying to not get them to get sick at this very early stage was too stressful so we spent most of our time stuck in my parents tiny apartment so i was really mad umm more so because i was hoping to get all these amazing photos and i could not get them it sounds so silly now lol looking
10:08 back that's what i was mad at but i was so mad umm i was still committed to a 365 project meaning i was still taking photos of my day to day life with my big camera at least once Thanks, and every day however i did not look at any of the photos i took did not like edit or anything because i just felt
10:34 like nothing i made was good enough because i was hoping to make all these beautiful lifestyle images now very suddenly we got the notification that we will be evacuated out of the epicenter and this was a photo i took when we were boarded our evacuation flight this was a cargo plane retrofitted with
11:02 seats and all these people in has met to their embassy workers they're not flight attendants um and this was the moment when they used the handheld speakerphone like to tell everybody welcome aboard we're gonna get you guys home safe and sound that was when reality hit yes we're going back to home in
11:29 united states but at the same time i just lost my opportunity to really document what life was like to spend my time with my family in that very unique specific situation and i was really this was a wake up call for me because we went home to visit family to spend time with family in the first place
12:02 and because it was not what i thought it would look like i tried to argue with myself i tried to bargain and i tried to ignore it and as a result i just lost the opportunity to document the real life that meant the most for me so after we landed in the united states during quarantine we were quarantined
12:29 in Omaha at a military base for two weeks I started to look through all the photos I took that I didn't look at when I was in China and I found this photo Initially when I took this photo it was because I felt spoiled Usually I am the one cooking When we were in China my mom cooked for us 3 meals a day
12:53 every day and it was a feast for every meal So I just documented my mom doing the things that she always does for us I just caught this photo of my mom cooking.
13:11 However, during quarantine my parents start to jokingly say to us when we FaceTime that they had to count how many eggs they cooked they can't eat because they're no longer allowed to go out to grocery shop as frequently and they would make comments how good our food looked like I mean we're quarantined
13:34 we're well taken care of but it's you know a military base its nothing fancy um and then my parents would also joke that oh you guys took all the good snacks with you um on the road and thats when it hit me so my parents actually drained their food storage to cook for us just so we could have a somewhat
14:00 normal Chinese New Year celebration and my mom had left no reserve for them Thank you. after we left and that was the moment when reality hit me that this is the most unconditional love I've ever seen presented in the most humble way This image right here is nothing fancy.
14:32 Nothing pretty. Ive also heard that people say this image with all the stuff collected in this tiny kitchen gives them anxiety.
14:42 However this is love I don't think with the Chinese culture me or my mom has ever said verbally out loud I love you but there's no doubt how much love Bye!
14:58 I feel when I look at this image So this is why I think real life is not always pretty but it is the most beautiful story you get to tell This is why I have been dedicate my life right now just doing the documentary approach instead of hoping to see what life could be I want to see life as it is I want
15:31 to honor my real life I want to celebrate my life right now and also this is my why to pay tribute to honor the real life that has passed that I had ignored when I was in China and that is my why Bye.
