Have you ever found a photo album over at granny’s house at the holidays and just howled with your cousins at the ridiculous hairstyles and fashion in those photos? Do you remember seeing the old cars and TVs, and gaudy carpets that should never EVER be en vogue again? You’d run into the grown-up’s table with your newly found amusement only to have grandma’s face soften into a smile and someone would say it.
“Ahhh the good ole days…”
For me, visual storytelling is far more than just capturing some smiles in a frame, but carrying the whole breadth and full essence of your family so that you can remember your good ole days. Visual storytelling acknowledges that the setting around you is a member of your family at that moment. For me, it’s not just a frame with faces or pretty scenery, but there is a memory and place attached to that specific time and place in space for that family unit or individuals. There are times that the memory is the grimaced face of a melancholy 7-year-old who just doesn’t want to take photos! Photography can often force something out of us that isn’t genuine, but visual storytelling accepts and welcomes you into the moment just as you are. Grimace and all.
Instead of sitting still for several awkward moments and forcing a moment, I like to give space to create moments and marry memory-making with family storytelling. Let’s go for a walk, spin in a circle or have dad tell a “dad joke” and capture the fine details of the moment. Children truly are only small for a short time, and your melancholy 7-year-old will soon be a brooding teenager.
Giving space and time to the moments, I can capture the details of them that day. A little hand in momma’s hand or dad throwing them up in the air is where I capture the fine details that sometimes fade with time.
Hold them sacred
I love doing a session at someone’s home and weaving in the special or cherished details of that particular season of their lives. Baking mom’s special cookies or reading their favorite book complete with thread-bare blankies and stinky pups. Like a La Croix on a hot afternoon, this is what bubbles up in me… to pluck memories and moments out of space and time and hold them sacred for the years to come.
Now, some families love an outdoor directed session, and I love doing those for the families that want and need that. At the same time, personal and visual storytelling is priceless and as unique as each being in the frame. To capture a post-nap walk to the playground for a snack and to stop time, freezing those smiles and the bedhead and laughing in the ether time for decades to come, is what visual storytelling is about for me.
Are you in a season of sprinklers and popsicles? Are the kids playing the same made-up games, ad nauseam, for hours on end and flooding the yard every afternoon? Are there permanent blue or red mustaches on the faces of your little tribe? My flavor of visual storytelling snatches that moment out of time and saves it so that in 25 years your kids can tell their kids the story of “The Summer of the Sprinkler” around the grown-up’s table.
Good ole days
In a day and age where every mom has a phone, we snap a cute picture without thinking twice about what else is going on beyond the cuteness. Visual storytelling allows you to step into the photo, into the moment with your family.
The magic that comes next is a secret sauce of sorts.
I can pan out and capture the whole picture; the park or your kitchen or the ice cream parlor you love and capture the full essence of that moment. And in the same nanosecond hold the bijou details like chocolate on a cheek, the changing sky as clouds roll in, or the pout of an impatient toddler. See?
These are your good ole days
The art of storytelling is being lost in our modern age. We’ve lost the generational handing down of our families’ stories. These stories were told over snapping green beans on the porch with grandma or tinkering in the garage with grandpa. Families used to share their stories as a way to remember where and who they came from. Storytelling was also entertainment. This is truly a lost art form. I hope that through visual storytelling I can give families the opportunity to tell their stories simply because we caught that mundane moment and held it as holy. This tells your story fully and wholly. Details of emotions, setting, personality, and even fashion all tell the little details of life in that season. The ingredients of your ‘good ole days’ are today, and they are all around.
So, how about it? If you want to remember your good ole days, let’s talk!