Wielding a Camera is Like Wielding a Super Power

I love to photograph families.  Yes, I said it and it's true.  Here's a secret, I don't mind the goofy faces, the tongues sticking out, the screaming, running, dirt throwing craziness of it all and here's why.  I started doing photography when I was 16 years old.  I went to a very small high school (lovingly named Cow Pie High) that was in an enclave of ruralness surrounded by urban sprawl.  In my junior year my high school brought something wonderfully exciting to our school and finally invested in a dark room as well as a photography teacher.  My parents bought me an old Minolta XG-1 film camera for the class and I washed away countless hours rinsing film and watching the world come to life underneath the filmy ripples of developers and rinses.  I loved it from moment I saw my first picture being brought to life by my own hands.

Wielding a camera is like wielding a super power.  You can freeze time.  You can take a moment that might fade from memory one day and hard wire it into digital circuitry, silver halide salts, and gelatin.    I will never forget the smile on my son's face when we went for a walk in the woods on a cloudy November day because I wrested it from the hands of time and when I am 80 years old I will have that moment still.  As a photographer, it isn't just my family that I am a part of.  I get to be a part of people's best days.  I get to be a part of a family holding hands together, a woman's first dance with her husband, a child being born into the world, and then I get to give those moments back to them.  Some of the best advice I can ever give to a client is to be yourselves.  I will capture the moments where you are all a beautiful, perfect, smiling family.  But I will also capture the goofiness, the mischievousness, the love and perfect uniqueness that is you.  I love to capture the smiles on my son's face, but I also love to capture his goofball moments because that is who he is and I don't ever want to forget the wonderfully complex individual that he is.  Being a photographer gives me the power to do that and it is such a beautiful thing that we live in a world where science has made us all super heroes ;-)

This is how our family photos usually turn out :)  I set up a tripod and put it on a timer and ta'da!

www.MinutesOfTime.com

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