Recently I was asked, “what is your business?”. And I first thought, photography. Then I quickly realized that my business is not just photographing families like this family’s generations of women. My business is so much more than that. What I really do is capture emotions, memories, and connections that are shared with one another. When I think of it that way, how can I not take care in that? How could I want to do anything other than photography? What better job is there than that? My business is all about people and why they love, who they love, and what it is about the person they love. It’s about people and their connections with one another and to this world.
When a family is able to look back at an image they’ve had taken, those images bring back the memories and evoke the emotions felt at that time and for those people. So really what I’m doing when photographing someone is not just providing an image, but I’m preserving the love and joy felt behind the image. I urge all of you to be in the moment, live, love and laugh with others, allow yourself to be captured in a photograph. Then cherish it all for generations to come. I urge you to pull out your images, and not on the computer, the ones you’ve printed. Look at them, sit down with your family and friends and talk about what it is that makes you feel the way you do when you look at that image. I can imagine what you’d say. It’d be things like “I remember that smile”, “I love how you laugh”, “I love your spirit”, and “remember that time when…”. No matter how old the image is, you get to share those feelings from the time of the image with the generations in your family. For those not in the image, they will get to hear your family’s history. Where they get their smile from, their spirit, and all that makes them who they are. And I get to tell that story.
For the Piche family, sharing life, love and laughter is the greatest joy they will ever do. Three generations of wonderful women. Passing down traditions, advice, knowledge, the sense of belonging, love and so much more. This is truly a gift any family can have and if you’re lucky enough to have the wisdom of a 4th generation, all the better. And after capturing the love of these generations, I got to do some Fine Art images of one of these lovely ladies.
