If you’re a photographer, it might seem hard to document your own family. Isn’t that ironic?! We spend our days documenting other’s lives but it’s hard to document our own!
I think there is a sweet spot to documenting your own family and when you can find your own rhythm, it actually allows you to ENJOY photography even though it’s your “job”!
There have been some things that I’ve learned to adapt or change if they didn’t work for me, and if it felt overwhelming to keep up with! So now with 3 kids and 1 on the way, I’m updating what has been working for me and how I document our family.
Documenting Our Family
Family Album
This is one of my FAVORITE things! It is so so important to me. The way I update them has changed over the years but we love to look back over the year as a whole and see the highlights!
12 Month Frames
This keeps me accountable to document their first year of life! I take a picture every month and put them in a gold frame from Pottery Barn!
Promptly Journal
I really value the letters and notes that my mom wrote to me growing up, and I think that’s part of why I love promptly journals so much. It has space to write letters and prompts about questions and important milestones in their life!
Printing & Framing Photos
I have gallery walls on each set of steps and I love updating them so that our kids can see the pictures of our family! What helps me to keep them updated is by printing the pictures at our house. When I purchased a camera years ago, it came free with a Canon Pixma PRO-200 printer and I didn’t think I would use it often, but I use it ALL THE TIME. I think the color is so good and it’s so worth it to me.
1 Second Everyday App
Seeing our memories in motion! Our kids love seeing memories more in videos rather than pictures and I don’t have a great way of organizing family videos but it’s always fun to see these videos come together.
Chatbooks
Even though I have my big camera out most of the time, there’s still a lot of pictures that I take on my iPhone! I have a separate Instagram account for our family pictures and every 60 images it automatically prints a new book! I love this because it adds a caption in too which is something I don’t do for our yearbook!
If this all sounds stressful to you, just start with one!! And even if your kids are in middle school, it’s never too late to start. I hope this gives you some ideas on how to document your own family!
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Thanks for reading!
— Katelyn
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