YOUR LIFE IS WORTH PHOTOGRAPHING

There are photographs we know we’re supposed to take.

Birthdays. First days of school. Christmas morning. Vacations. Graduations. The family standing together in nice clothes because everyone is here and somebody said we should get a picture.

We’re pretty good at photographing the occasions that announce themselves as important.

It’s the rest of our lives we tend to miss.

The half-finished cup of coffee next to your partner’s side of the bed. Your kid sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter even though you’ve asked them approximately four thousand times not to. The pile of shoes by the door. The dog asleep in the patch of afternoon sun they’ve claimed as their own.

The way your house looked before you remodeled it.

The view from the window over the kitchen sink.

Your mother’s hands making the thing she has made a hundred times without a recipe.

The ridiculous collection your child carried everywhere for six months and then, without anyone noticing exactly when, stopped caring about completely.

None of these things feel particularly historic while they’re happening.

That’s exactly the problem.

WE DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’LL MISS YET

One of the strange things about photographs is that their value can change over time.

A photograph that feels completely unremarkable today can become important twenty years from now for reasons the person holding the camera could never have predicted.

Maybe you took a photograph of your kid at the kitchen table because they were being funny. Years later, you notice the wallpaper behind them. The cereal box on the counter. The chair that belonged to your grandmother.

Maybe there’s a photograph of your dad standing beside a car, and eventually you care much less about the car than you do about the way he stood.

Sometimes the thing we were photographing isn’t even the thing we end up wanting to see.

That’s why I don’t think we should only photograph what seems important.

We should photograph what is familiar.

Familiarity has a way of becoming invisible. We stop noticing the things we see every day precisely because we see them every day.

Until we don’t.

PHOTOGRAPH THE HOUSE

Not just after you clean it.

Actually, especially not just after you clean it.

Photograph your living room with the blankets piled on the couch. The magnets on the refrigerator. The drawings taped to the wall. The bathroom counter. The books beside the bed. The toys on the floor.

Stand in the doorway of your child’s bedroom and make a photograph.

Someday that room will change.

Photograph your own bedroom, too.

And the garage. And the backyard. And the weird little corner where everyone drops their stuff when they come through the door.

You don't need to make these photographs beautiful enough for anyone else.

You’re making a record.

PHOTOGRAPH THE PEOPLE WITHOUT ASKING THEM TO LOOK AT YOU

There is nothing wrong with a photograph where everyone is smiling at the camera. I want those too.

But I also want the photographs where nobody is paying attention to the photographer.

Your partner reading on the couch.

Your kids making something at the table.

Your dad working in the garage.

Your mother cooking.

Someone brushing a child's hair.

People talking after dinner when the plates are still on the table.

Photograph the way people exist when they aren't arranging themselves to be remembered.

Those photographs often contain the gestures and relationships that disappear the moment someone says, Everybody look over here.

PHOTOGRAPH YOUR PEOPLE WITH THEIR THINGS

Objects are part of our stories, too.

If your grandfather has spent thirty years in the same chair, photograph him sitting in it.

Photograph your mother wearing the necklace you know you'll eventually inherit.

Photograph your kid holding the stuffed animal that currently goes everywhere.

Photograph the person with the thing.

It gives the object context. It creates a record of scale, use, ownership, relationship, and sometimes a story nobody thought to write down.

Years later, the photograph can answer a question an object alone can't:

Who did this belong to?

PHOTOGRAPH YOURSELF

This one is hard.

Especially if you're usually the person holding the camera.

Especially if you don't particularly like being photographed.

Especially if you're waiting to change your hair, feel more comfortable in your body, buy different clothes, or become some future version of yourself you think will be more worthy of documenting.

Get in anyway.

Your family does not experience you as an inconvenient body ruining an otherwise lovely photograph.

You're part of their life.

You belong in the record.

So do your hands. Your clothes. The way you held your babies. The way you sat on the couch. The way you looked standing in your own kitchen.

You were there, too.

YOU DON'T NEED A BETTER CAMERA

You probably already have a camera within a few feet of you.

Use it.

I'm a professional photographer. I love cameras. I care about light and lenses and composition and all of the things that make photography a craft.

But the photograph you actually make is more valuable than the technically perfect photograph you never make.

You don't need to turn your family into a photography project. You don't need to document every second of your life. And you definitely don't need another reason to experience your days through a screen.

Just notice.

Every once in a while, when something feels so ordinary that you can't imagine why anyone would photograph it, maybe photograph it.

THIS IS HOW ORDINARY LIFE BECOMES HISTORY

Family archives aren't made only from formal portraits and important documents.

They're built from grocery lists and handwriting. Home movies and birthday cards. Photographs with terrible lighting. Voicemails. Recipes. School pictures. The contents of pockets. The dog asleep on the couch.

The evidence of a life is usually remarkably ordinary.

That's what makes photographing your life now part of preserving your family history later.

You aren't only making photographs for yourself today.

You're leaving clues for the people who will someday wonder what it was like to be here.

What your house looked like.

What everyone did on Sunday mornings.

What your mother looked like when she laughed.

What you wore.

What you loved.

Who was always nearby.

How all of you spent your completely ordinary days.

Your life doesn't have to become extraordinary before it's worth photographing. It already is.