Objective: to approach photography with one thing in mind- the hunt for spirit.
There are a lot of reasons why we photograph our children. You want to document their milestones, the progress and the growth. You want to remember what they looked like and the places you went to. You want to capture the birthday parties and the graduations- in essence, the history of it all. More than that though, I think we are trying to capture their spirit. We want to remember what they sounded like when they laughed, how they made that one amazing expression, how their eyes looked, what they felt like...THAT is all much harder to capture.
When I was in art school, I remember someone telling me that when you shot a roll of film, you should be happy if there was a single ONE magical shot per roll. The idea was that photography was a bit of a chase and that every shot was not going to be "the one". It is still like that today. I may shoot a hundred images during a session. I'll cull that down to 30-40 that I really, really like and show that to my client. Out of that 30-40 there may be 1 or 2 or maybe even 2-3 that I love. I will like a lot of them and a lot of them will be good but there will be a smaller percentage that I really connect to.
That smaller set of images are the soul and spirit images. For me that means that I captured what I experienced as the heart of that small moment with my subject. Who they were to me during that photo session. I love those images. It is why I do what I do.
Here's a few from a session last week. I love these because this was exactly how these two siblings were.
There were about 4 images in front of this one and behind it but this one just caught a certain something in their eyes and their bodies that makes it special.
Mom loved both of these. That is always a big validation for me too. And, of course, you have to have one like this...
Forget the "cheese!" and the perfect pose...go try and catch the spirit! It's the image that you will cherish most of all.