Photo 365 Project | St. Louis Documentary Photographer

As a St. Louis documentary photographer, when I go to a photo session to document families in their homes, I encourage them to be themselves.  I am not a silent fly on the wall, but I try to not interact too much where it interferes with their planned activity.  I want genuine emotions and interactions and I want the focus to be their families.  When little kids are involved (which they usually are), I have to try to earn their trust.  They're typically skeptical at first if they've never met me before.  Once I have their trust but not their undivided attention, I can usually move about more freely to capture them in their truest form. 

Day 1: New Year's Eve and New Year's Day was exhausting. They fell asleep within 2 minutes of laying their heads on their pillows.

Day 2: Our twin babies, Max (L) and Alli (R) hanging out on our bed before nap time.

I often feel like those silly wildlife/safari jokes you see where someone says, "And here we have Katie in her natural habitat, photographing Johnny playing with toys," with a picture of me taking a picture of the kid.  It sounds goofy, but it's pretty spot on regarding what I'm trying to do.  My goal is always to capture the essence of a family.  To document childhood.  To photograph those tiny details that pass by in moments so fleeting you don't even think about them happening.  The minute.  The day to day.  I document the things you will forget even though they're the things you tell yourself you could *never* forget.  The dimples, the chubby "baby face" cheeks that you think disappear once the child turns 2 or 3, but really you look back when you have a teenager and realize your now teenager had a "baby face" right through 8th grade.  I aim to photograph the session in a way that you look at it and say, "Oh that has *our* family written all over it," or "That is SO Tommy's personality!"

So being a documentary family photographer, I feel it's important that I do this with my own family as well. The huge difference of course is that my family is beyond used to me with a camera.  Funny enough, though, lots of my own family memories are captured just like everyone else's in this day and age -- on my iPhone.  This year is the year I change that slightly.  I'll still have my phone on me more frequently than my camera, but I'm using my professional camera each and every day to do a Photo 365 project.  This year, it's technically a photo 366 since it's a leap year, but for SEO purposes and hashtag purposes, I'm going to call it a Photo 365 Project.  I want to capture my own family and my own day to day through one picture daily.

Day 3: Our sweet little guy, Max, chilling on the floor with an adorable llama outfit.

Day 4: My husband, Tony, taking the Christmas tree out of the house. Much like the New Year, out with the old, in with the new!

I've been debating on how I wanted to share this with you, dear Readers.  I considered posting the photo every day on my Instagram account and I may post some there as well, but don't count on seeing those on there daily simply because I know myself.  There is no way I will sit down at my computer daily once I've gotten my picture, edit it, caption it, and post it or at least definitely not before 10pm.  The fact that I've decided to do a project where I have to take a picture every day for 366 days is a big commitment in itself.  I figure this is a good way to force myself to share the photos, but also for you to see many at a given time.  I intend to give a little background on the photos and my plan is to blog them about once per week (another challenge I've given myself for 2020 ha ha).

Day 5: One of our twin babies, Alli, sporting an adorable rainbow outfit.

Day 6: Our 2 year old, Emma, reaching into the sink playing with water. She's not supposed to do this, but since she's the middle child and we're often tending to the babies, she has learned to help herself which is both hilarious and frustrating.

Day 7: Our two year old, Emma, reading a book to our twins. Mostly Emma just likes to thumb through this book asking me about the baby animals in the book.

I've got a lot of big goals this year for both my personal life and my business.  They say if you set goals but don't tell anyone about the, you are far less likely to accomplish them.  So, I'll throw out a few of my 2020 goals and hope it will hold me accountable.

Day 8: Our 5 year old, Finn, working on some drawings and notes for his friends at school.

Day 9: That's me! I often hold the babies over my shoulder like that. This really captures what it's like to do my every day life currently. There's typically a baby in one arm and I'm trying to accomplish something with the other.

Among the photography business goals:  Take one photo every day, blog every 1-2 weeks, revamp my business (and there's a lot that goes under this category, but I won't bore you with all the details beyond the fact that it involves a new look, a new website, and new ways to operate more efficiently and push me towards more successes), finish my videography course, clean off my computer (the struggle is real to have a computer not bogged down with pictures when you're a photographer -- hello better processes!!), and to be proactive rather than reactive.  

Day 10: The kiddos just before bed with their books waiting for me to read to them. See? I'm keeping up with at least 2 of my goals - a daily photo and reading to the kids ;)

Day 11: Our oldest, Zoe, who is 7, reading a book to our 5 and 2 year olds as well as our baby, Alli. It was the sweetest little sibling moment and I knew I would be remiss if I didn't document this.

Among my personal goals: sit down to read a book at least 3 times a week, read more books to my kids, use and buy less, use mesh produce bags, use less plastic, use silicone baking mats in place of aluminum foil and parchment paper, aluminum straws instead of plastic, clean out my filing cabinet, don't go out to eat as much, spend less time on social media, not take things so seriously/be more care free, have more fun, edit my own personal photos in a timely manner (I'm literally years behind on this which is embarrassing!), and plan more date nights with my husband, Tony (I didn't tell him this one...let's see if he reads this blog ha ha).

Have you ever done a Photo 365 project?  I'd love to hear tips, success stories, and what you got out of it!  

If you're a St. Louis family interested in your family's story being documented, reach out and let's set it up!