Nostalgic For Right Now(!)

On photographs + memories

This is one of my favorite photos.

Because it so perfectly describes our childhood. Best buds and Dairy Queen ice cream spoons. It’s important to note that it’s not a “good” photo. And when I say good photo, I mean it wasn’t posed, we didn’t pick out outfits, there’s not a backdrop. It’s July in Chicago, we’re probably a little sweaty, and whoever took it (Mom) definitely wasn’t trying to create a keepsake. But the second I look at it, I’m immediately back there. The particular kind of happiness that comes from being almost four years old, getting soft serve with your family, and having absolutely nothing else to think about. That photo itself isn’t impressive, but it’s the one I actually remember.

Lately I've been thinking that the photos that end up mattering most are rarely the ones “designed” to matter. It's not the Christmas card or the family portrait. It’s also not everyone lined up in front of something beautiful, looking directly at the camera. It’s the ones that are goofy and unguarded. Where a brother and sister have a spoon in their mouth both wearing overalls, and no one was even trying.

That’s what a childhood feels like, at least in hindsight.

I’ve been shooting with a real camera more seriously this past year — not professionally, but intentionally. And it took me a while to figure out what I actually wanted to photograph. I finally landed on portraits, specifically candid ones. Because of the feeling you have while taking the shots.

It happens when I’m photographing Sloane, or when I shot our friends and their one-year-old recently. It’s this awareness, almost a physical sensation, of knowing you’re in a moment that will never exist again. This exact version of her. This age, this size, the way she looks at something she doesn’t understand yet.

Cam and I talk about this a lot. How much of parenting, for us, is about how we make her feel. Not necessarily the milestones we document or the activities we do, but the feeling underneath all of it. Just, what did it feel like to grow up in our house?

Did it feel warm? Did it feel safe? Did it feel like you were deeply loved? I think that’s reallllly what I’m trying to photograph. Not evidence necessarily that something happened, but how it felt.

That’s probably why I’ve fallen so hard for shooting on a real camera. The iPhone turned photography into an infinite resource. We take thousands of photos because we can. Every meal, every walk, every mildly amusing thing our child does. I do it too. But abundance has this funny way of flattening significance. When everything gets documented, it can be hard to remember.

Shooting intentionally just feels different. You choose the frame, edit the image, spend a bit of time with it. And decide which photos are worth keeping (or deciding what mattered?).

The spoon photo did that for me. It reached across 27 years and handed me back a feeling. And I’m just trying to do the same for someone else.