Magic in the Mundane (and 3 FAQs about winter photos)
A little article I wrote for a local publication. I thought I’d share with you what magic in the mundane means to me…
Have you ever stopped in the whirlwind of it all, right in the middle of an everyday moment with your family, when everything feels a little out of control and chaotic and messy and overwhelming and think… “This is insane, but I love it so much”?
Maybe yes, maybe no. It took me a long time after having kids to have that perspective. For years it felt more like “Oh my gosh, someone please rescue me, I’m drowning among these little needy people.” It really is a daze, all of it. I never imagined having to work so hard at being present.
My kids are 6, 10 and 13 now, so it has settled in some ways. (In other ways not. Oh, the chauffeuring!) I am grateful to be able to just pause and “see” them now. To have these magic moments and conversations where I pull back from the scene and feel a quiet - just for a second - and see them figuring out life and growing in to themselves. It almost takes my breath away and certainly makes me teary eyed.
I’m a photographer, and I still wish I took more pictures of my own family. (I take a whole lot of mental pictures.) But I do sometimes pull out my camera or my phone and try to hold on to a piece of this mundane that I know I will miss terribly one day. It’s often a certain look - a concentration face, a whole body laugh, a mess of limbs caught in crazy sibling scrapping, a snuggle with Dad, even the intense concentration face that screen time can bring. I grab that perfect capture here and there.
It’s hard to stop and notice and breathe and just be IN it. So very hard. We are tired and busy and overwhelmed. But making the noticing a regular thing changes us. A noticing practice becomes a gratitude practice. When I can even briefly feel gratitude for the warm familiarity of everyday routines, I make room for both/and. Life with jobs and partners and kids is both/and. Hard/rewarding. Draining/energizing. Endlessly mundane/endlessly magical.
Seemingly mundane moments have become the focus in my family photography. My perspective behind the lens reflects the one I’ve developed as a parent. It’s what I want captured for my own family. I want photos that say “This is just a little snapshot of you being you, but look… It’s so beautiful.”
For my own family I know what I want captured, and it doesn’t involve scratchy new matching clothes, smiles at the camera, or images where we were told to “hold still”. We’ve tried that. Those photos were… fine. But we’ve also been photographed in our home, just BE-ing. Images of our kids playing instruments, snuggling with us, playing with dolls, dressed up in costume, being silly, being sad, being them. Now those photos… those are treasures.
FAQ’s I get about indoor and winter photography and my thoughts about them…
Who wants winter photos in Ohio?! Winter isn’t always a time that we think of getting family photos in Ohio. Isn’t fall the obvious choice? You’d be surprised. The bare trees bring incredible bright light indoors. My favorite family photos were done at home in the winter, and my kids are in their everyday clothing (which means too-short athletic pants). They are snuggly, warm and represent us so well. Truly capturing the magic in the mundane.
Don’t I need a perfect house? Ugh, do I have to clean? Nope and nope. If I’ve done my job well, your focus will be on the connection, not any type of perfection. Often families assume that we will photograph in a main family room, but honestly I tend to grab images using gorgeous light puddles by a window or piled on a bed, so you’ll just end up cleaning unnecessary areas. We will move piles of clutter if needed and sit by the dust bunnies, and it will be beautiful.
My kids will be crazy indoors! What is there to take photos of anyway? One of the things that regularly happens when I do indoor sessions is that I say hello at the door and then kinda ignore parents for a while (sorry). I loooove to greet kids and ask them to introduce me to their family, then have them show me their toys, their bedrooms, their books and favorite activities. It’s a nice ice breaker. Then we move in to more family photos and activities together. It almost always feels like we just hung out for a while together (and parents wonder how I got any good shots in the chaos!) But it’s incredible what beauty you’ll see in your gallery. We can mix it up and do outdoor shots too - play in the snow, go on a quick adventure - then come back and warm up. It’s in these sessions that we get the most pure photo of a toddler putting on their own boots or pictures of an intense family card game.