Jennifer photographs a client during a Postpartum Project session at Redhead Creative Media in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
You look at your website but you don’t see yourself.
You see a headshot that ticks a box, but it misses the woman you’ve actually become.
So let me ask you something.
What’s actually in your archive?
When you think about the library that is your visual archive, what is it in there that tells the next generation who you actually are? Not just the career milestones, but all the little things in between.
Does it exist?
I’d be willing to bet it exists in little snatches.
But there’s nothing truly discernible in your archive that says: This is who I was. This is what I was thinking. This is what I was doing to become who I wanted to become. And this is who I actually became.
And it’s probably not there in your own words either.
Your archive is not just a collection of headshots
We are so focused on the career mindset that we forget we are more than our career. We’re a nation of living to work instead of working to live.
And when we forget to celebrate ourselves outside of that work, all the different aspects of who we are, we lose the through line of our story. The through line is all of the arcs of your personal journey.
These are the things I want my loved ones, especially my children, to have.
And it’s getting more important the older we get.
The gaps we don’t see until we go looking
I‘ve talked before about the gaps in my mom’s photos. Recently a friend of mine lost her mom, and she said to me, “You know what? We have the same thing. We went looking for pictures, and I have one of her from her 20s.”
She had hardly anything of her mom. And it really made me sad for her.
When you lose someone you love and you don’t have that tangible evidence to hold on to, it’s like you lose a piece of yourself in a way.
Because their story impacts yours.
When we take the time to document our story, from our point of view, in our words, the people we love get to go back and reread, relisten and relook at all of those different parts of who we were.
Why we only photograph the milestones
Another reason those gaps exist is that we wait for the milestones. We take pictures at graduations and weddings, and sometimes with a promotion or move. We take pictures on trips. We take lots of selfies.
But that’s not quite the same thing as really sitting down in a safe space, in front of the camera, speaking your truth and letting someone document you in that space.
The real story lives in the in-between
It’s those spaces in between where the real story lives.
All of your mannerisms. How you hold yourself. What you do with your hands. How you smile.
How one eye maybe squishes down more than the other one.
My eyes do that, and I don’t always care for it. But you know what? It’s part of what my face does. It’s part of who I am.
And it’s something my kids are going to remember, because it’s in every photograph of me when I’m smiling.
I have some of this for my mom, too, because some of her mannerisms are scattered through the pictures we have of her. It’s not every action or detail, but the ones I have, I treasure, because they help bring her to life.
The conversations I wish I’d recorded
I wish more than anything I had conversations recorded with her, where she told me more about herself. Her perspectives. Why she made the decisions she made. Who she thought she wanted to be when she was little.
That’s part of why I’m so passionate about helping people, and women especially, document their stories for their loved ones. It’s important to create that archive, to have that library, and to celebrate every part of you as an individual throughout your life.
What a legacy session looks like
When I talk about documenting your story in a studio with a photographer, I’m talking about a legacy session with me. It’s a portrait interview where we talk about the chapters of your life you want to record.
We’re not going to record your whole life story in one sitting.
But we can focus on one particular part of your story.
Take your college years, for instance. Maybe you want to relive them and tell some funny stories about the crazy things you got up to.
We can do all of that in the safety of the studio, where we can relive those moments and the emotion of them. We can paint a picture with different lighting setups and different props to bring that chapter to life.
I know some of the things I got up to in college I wouldn’t have wanted photographed in the moment. But the idea of actually telling that story, and having a photograph of me telling it?
That’s a really interesting idea. I think I’m going to have to go do that for myself.
That’s the kind of thing I’m after: helping you document the in-between phases, and the stories that really paint a picture of you as an individual.
Who you were, the plans you had for your life, the things you did, and where you ended up, or where you are right now on that path.
Where to start
If you want to take a stab at recording your story but you’re not sure where to start, download the free Field Guide at redheadcreativemedia.com/yourstory. It’s an easy way to get started.
Once you’ve worked through it, reach out, or go ahead and fill out the form below.
Let’s have a conversation about which chapter of your story you’d like to start with.