Moms, Are You in the Photos?

I read this just before giving birth and still didn’t do it! That’s for the reminder!!

This is beautiful. Take pictures, always – but be in the moment as well – they grow up so very fast.

I love this idea. I am constantly behind the camera as a photographer, as was my mother, and feel disappointed by the lack of photos with my baby! Pro tip – buy a Yashica T4 off ebay, it’s nearly impossible to take a bad photo with it and has worked well when passing to strangers if they can somehow remember how to look through a viewfinder.

Wow, you’re right, I need to be in these moments not just take photos of them. Glad I’m reading this when she’s 10-months old and not 10-years!

Joanna! There is a **wonderful** movement of professional photographers like myself shooting documentary family sessions. They’re longer than a typical session (mine are about 4 hours) and I photograph families doing their everyday stuff with their kids, exactly as you describe, then make a beautiful boon from the photos depicting a regular day. My dear friend and truly talented colleague Francesca Russell Photography & Films is in your neck of the woods. You should look her up! xo

I’m a professional photographer and preach about mom getting in the photo all.the.time. But never did this start to be my true anthem until I had my son. There is one photo of just the two of us in the hospital when he was born and it makes me sick that I don’t have more. I should’ve asked. Mamas, always ask, no matter how silly you feel. You will never regret taking the photo but you sure as heck might regret not taking it.

I really needed to hear this today! My mom past away last year and I only have a handful of pictures of her and I together. She always took the photos and never liked having her photo taken. I hadn’t really thought about it until reading this that I am usually the one snapping photos but rarely am in them with my kids. I want to make sure they remember our time together in the beautiful thing we call life!

I don’t know why but I honestly teared up while reading this post!! I almost have no pictures of me with my dad (who passed away four years ago), and now that I live in a different country from my mum, I have so few photos of us together too. I’ve vowed to have more photos taken with my twin girls, and I make sure I take photos of them with their dad as well. It’s so easy to get caught up with the busy-ness of life and more often than not, we just remember to take photos of the ‘special occasion’ days. One thing I found very useful was to install this app called ‘Day One’. It’s kind of like a photo journalling thing. It inspires (and pushes) me to take at least a photo a day. Sometimes I only remember to take one when the girls have already fallen asleep, so most of the pictures are of them sleeping haha! But mostly, it’s become part of my day already, and I always make sure I get a photo of us for the day, even if it’s just my hubby reading a bedtime story to them, or the girls taking a bath. It’s so nice to look back on. And if I really want to have a hardcopy memory of these photos, I’m thinking of compiling all these photos and create a photobook through this app called ‘Chatbook’ — haven’t gotten around to it, but it could be a good idea.

This is the cutest. I love it, and will 100% implement it, and spread the word to my mumma friends. ADORBS photos of your contributors.

I am a widow and it is almost like I do not exist when I look back at the last few years worth of pictures. I wish I had more pictures of the us in play, cuddles or even the mundane moments to remind me that I was present in the dark days of early widowhood. But I can start now! This is a great idea, thank you!

It’s so funny you posted this because today I took my kids to this sweet pumpkin patch and they had this house made out of pumpkins! I wanted to take a picture of my kids popping their heads through the little window, and an sweet older woman nearby said “Do you want me to take the picture so you can get in it with them?” and I said “Oh gosh. Really? But I look awful! I just got rained on and my hair is all frizzy!” and she said “You look gorgeous honey, go get in the picture.” Haha! Sure enough I am thankful that I now have a picture of us, frizzy hair and all!

This is so beautiful and reminds me of the quote CoJ posted the other day, that all the repetitive tasks of parenthood are a way of saying “I love you” over and over again. It would be lovely to have pictures of that

I’m a photographer and I am constantly convincing clients to do a motherhood session. It’s so rare for us to be in the pictures and even at family sessions, all too often the dad and kids steal the show. I think it’s very important for moms to see how beautiful they look when tying shoes or wiping noses or doing the things we do all day that feel anything but beautiful. Especially when our kids are little, we get so lost in the mundane that it’s hard to see the beauty. I try to do my part to remind mom’s just how beautiful their lives are.

Yes! I need to ask people when we’re out (I love that bit about asking teenagers!). My dear husband is the best man ever, but he’s an awful photographer- haha.

Take photos with the family photographer! Every family has one, the person who always has the camera and captures the moment. I realized after my dad died how few photos there are of the two of us – we were always the ones taking the pictures. Makes me sad.

A photo of Julie/any mom carrying a stroller down the subway stairs — I love this so much. My mother died when my siblings and I were kids and teens, and what I wouldn’t give to see photos of her making us salami sandwiches
or outside the pediatrician’s office!
I have two young children now and strive to capture the quotidian — but I will make an effort to include myself, too! Thank you for this post.

I am reading The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd and last night, I ran across this line, “…it seemed strange to me how love and habit blurred so thoroughly to make a life.” Immediately, your words and the images of Liz and LaTonya came to mind. Grocery stores, playgrounds, book snuggles, after school snacks, baths, cartoons, sippy cups- that’s my love, my habit, my life. How did I get so lucky?

This resonates with me so much! My Mom always tells my sister and I to take pictures that have us in it because there are not many pictures of us with my Mom when we were little. My sister and I pay it forward by taking pictures of each other with our kiddos and then uploading them to a shared album. We talk about how in our retirement we’re going to scrapbook all the photos, ha!

Thank you for this. I was diagnosed with cancer while I was pregnant, and had to undergo treatment so I did sort of avoid the camera a bit when my baby boy was born because I did not want to see myself looking ill, losing my hair. But the pictures we do have now, now that I am thankfully in remission, I am so grateful for even though they are still very hard to look at. And just a couple of weeks ago we did a photo shoot, my husband and baby and me, so that we could have these pictures for him when he grows up. Even though I am conflicted about seeing myself with my short hair (which does not look bad, but I associate it with being ill) I very strongly feel that it’s important to record the daily. Also since having cancer really brought home that we can’t take for granted that we will always be there for our kids. Having these pictures is so precious!

I definitely intend to make sure I’m in plenty of the photos when I have kids. My mum passed away when I was a baby and there’s actually only 1 photo I’ve ever found of her with me and my siblings all together. There’s more photos of her with my older siblings, but still not very many as she was almost always the one behind the camera. Part of that is perhaps that people used to take less photos in the pre-digital camera age, but I wish I had more photos of her, even doing mundane things, just to get more of a sense of what she was like, her different facial expressions etc.

I think that our children will have such a mountain of photos in their legacy anyway that they will never get through them in their life ….. so I prefer less, but those special.
When my nephew was younger, he became quite nervous from constant phone in front of his face from entire family and eventually did not even want to be photographed any more… he was just turning his head away. Now we have limited this just to special moments and he tolerates it..:-))

You look so much like your mom in the last photo. You have posted lots of photos of her with you guys as babies and it’s lovely.

oh, I love this so much. especially the bit about capturing everyday happenings. amidst so many (great) photos of birthday cakes and holiday unwrapping and family vacations, my hands-down favorite family shot was taken by my husband at 7AM on a school day — my kids and i are in the bathroom, i’m checking my 7 year old’s head for lice (for the zillionth time!) while he brushes his teeth and our toddler is camped out on the training potty. so unglamorous. but definitely a reflection what our life really looks like. and seeing it photographed made me all the more grateful for moments like these.

I do lots of social activities with my Mum friends during the week (usually while spouses are at work). We make a conscious effort to photograph each other doing stuff with our kids and then afterwards we text them to each other. It takes two seconds, no one poses, sometimes we don’t even reply to the photo exchange but boy is it nice to have a camera roll that features lots of everyday moments. Id never have photos of myself at the playgroup play dough table or dishing out morning tea at the park otherwise. Ive also never taken a photo of another Mum and thought her stomach looked fat or her hair looked limp so its taught me to be a bit less harsh on myself!

I was just thinking about this today, while going through photos of my first daughter when I was pregnant with my second. I wish so much I had a shot of myself with my big ‘ol belly and my first baby girl about to become a big sister. My most favorite picture of me and my mom was when she was pregnant with my little brother – there is just so much magic in that photograph – my mom young with a big round belly, and me, completely oblivious, holding her hand while walking down the street. <3

So, so timely. My husband and I have been trying to adopt. We just got foster placement twin infants. We want to adopt them, but know our time with them may be limited. We’ve been going to visit them in the NICU and I’m a mess from crying so much, my hair is unwashed, and my makeup has run.

But oh how I want my husband and me to be IN the pictures with these babies. My hope and prayers is that one day we will have wedding pictures with them, graduation pictures with them, birthdays upon birthdays pictures with them, lost tooth pictures, vacation pictures– all things we must hold with open hands for now. So for now, I will treasure every single opportunity I have to take their pictures and be in pictures with them. Whether these sweet babies are with me for a lifetime or a week, those pictures will represent the memories of the love we could give each day.