When I left High School I constantly had older family members telling me how quickly time goes from that point. I had never really paid much attention to it until three years ago, in 2015, I realised it had been ten years since I left school.
It was that year that I gave birth to our first born, a gorgeous little boy.
Now I literally can’t ignore how quickly time flies by. I have a constantly reminder of it running around the house continuously causing chaos.
Not to mention how the last year has zoomed by since we had our second boy, I swear we only brought him home from the hospital last week.
And yet at the same time it feels like they have both been in our lives forever.
Please tell me this sounds familiar?
This is currently my biggest fear: time is going by way too quickly!
Every night after tucking them both in bed I question myself; “Did I really spend as much quality time with them as I should have today?”
I go to bed with a twinge of guilt that we didn’t get round to painting or that I only read one story at bedtime, and I promise myself I will try harder to do more tomorrow.
So what’s the solution to this inevitable problem?
Ok, let’s be honest, there isn’t one. Time will always get away from us. But I bet you already knew that anyway.
We are however living in a time where it has never been so easy to capture our favourite moments and store them, physically, as memories. Almost everybody carries a camera and video recorder around with them in their pocket, everywhere they go.
So although there is no magical way of slowing down time, we can freeze it to look back on. To me that is a pretty close second best!
This is what photography means to me. Keeping something still and clear, so that it won’t be distorted in your mind’s eye, or even worse, forgotten completely.
I have always been very sentimental-even to the point of not wanting to throw my favourite pair of socks away when I was little! I never wanted to move house and leave the building behind when it had surrounded us and keep us safe and happy as a family for so many years! From picking up a camera I would often photograph objects and I remember my Mum telling me “You’re wasting film!” but to me these things were important and I knew they wouldn’t be that way forever!
You can only imagine how this feeling has gotten worse since having children, every single moment is infinitely precious. The opportunities that I have missed photographing are laced with guilt, but then at the same time we can not live our lives behind our smart phones and miss ‘the real deal’.
It’s just one of the complications that come with being a Mum.
Anyway, I’m babbling…
What I really wanted to say was THIS is why I love my job. This is why I make such beautiful portraits. Because I understand what they will mean to you as a parent, and I know how important it is to get a true representation your child! When you leave the studio you not not just leave with photographs-you leave with portraits, with memories.