Some sessions just have a feeling This song captured it. Play it while you scroll.
The session was done, my couple was walking to their car, and I was doing that end-of-shoot inventory in my head where you're already half in the editing room even though you're still standing in a park.
Brushy Creek Lake Park in Cedar Park was doing what it does in late November, which is look completely beautiful while also being an unreasonable ninety-something degrees, and I was sweating through my shirt like someone had lied to me about what season it was. Gear on my shoulder, keys in my hand, ready to go.
Then I saw her.
A mom, a little ways off in the grass, crouched in front of a tripod with her phone mounted on top, and her whole family arranged next to her in their Christmas best, waiting. She'd pose everyone, check the shot, set the timer again, adjust something, try again, and you could see her working so hard to get it right with exactly what she had.
Here's the thing I actually believe, and I want to say it before I tell you what I did next. A photograph taken on an iPhone is not a lesser record of love than one taken on a professional camera, and a family who documents themselves with whatever device is available is doing something brave and intentional and worth respecting. There is no law that says memory requires a full-frame sensor, and I would never want someone to feel like their family's story is less valid because they couldn't afford to hire someone. The image a mom takes of her kids for Christmas cards with her phone, blurry and backlit and slightly off-center, is a treasure, and thirty years from now her children will remember and feel that.
What I could not do, though, was walk past a family standing in November GOLDEN LIGHT with a photographer still warm from a session standing thirty feet away, and just get in my car. The light was going fast, the kind of late-afternoon Texas light that makes everything look like it was art-directed, and I had a camera and I had time and I had this feeling that REFUSED to let my feet keep moving toward the parking lot!!!
So I walked over and asked if they wanted some free photos.
They said yes and what followed was one of those sessions that reminds you why you started doing this in the first place. We had maybe twenty minutes before the sun finished its Sound of Music exit... you know the one, "the sun has gone to bed and so must I..." and we spent every minute of it running around and dancing and chasing whatever light was left. Late November in Texas means you're sweating while your subjects are dressed for December, and there's something wonderfully absurd about photographing a family in their Christmas best while you yourself are melting.
They were so fun, and so kind, and the thing that stayed with me most was the way the husband looked at his wife. Not for the camera, not performing anything. Just looking at her the way people look at someone they have genuinely chosen over and over again.
That love was already there before I walked over. Whatever was between that husband and his wife, whatever warmth held that family together in the grass, none of it was something I created or cooked-up or directed into existence. It was already alive and already real and would have kept being real whether my camera was there or not! What photography does, at its best, is simply refuse to let the moment go unwitnessed at full resolution, and on this particular evening in Cedar Park, with the light running out and my shirt already a lost cause, I was not about to be the person who walked past it.
So if you ever see me leaving a session at a park while you're standing there with a tripod and a prayer, there's a chance you'll get free family photos out of it. The thing is, I never quite know where I'll end up or when, which means you won't either. 😉 So if you've been thinking about booking a session and something keeps stopping you, I want you to know that the love in your family is already there and already worth documenting, and I would really love to be the one who catches it.
