Crying

I was just getting started photographing my daughter for some portraits when the drama happened. Which is usual when you are six-years-old, emotions seem to be surface level all the time. I had a choice at that moment. I could put down the camera and console her. Or I could take some pictures. I decided to take pictures. Now I didn’t get all Greenberg with this shoot. The crying episode didn’t last more than a few short moments. But it really got me to thinking about something and asking a lot of questions.

If we are taking photos of our families are we only taking pictures during the happiest of times? Are we only preserving the nice moments in life? Obviously at that moment those are the only times we think we want to remember so we take pictures. But what about the rest of our life? The messy and dirty parts. The parts we wish we could forget, with all the crying and heartache? At the end of our life will we want to remember those times in the same way?

Isn’t it the difficult seasons of life the seasons that really shape us in to who we are? Have you ever had something good come out of something horrible wrong? Would you want to remember the fire after you walked though it?

Shouldn’t we be documenting the real us?