Today, my oldest son turns 7 years old. When I think about the years that passed, I am so thankful I have a photographic record, because quite honestly, I remember very little nowadays (I blame my two pregnancies and parenting in general).

And I don't always take lots of pictures of Graham. In fact, I don't want hundreds of photos on my phone to be the only record of his childhood. At this point, knowing what I know, I don't expect those digital files to be there in ten or twenty years.. which is why it's so important for me to have a handful of really good quality photographs of each of my boys every year. Those are the photos I print and safely keep in a box for each child. It's their record, and very much like what I have from my childhood, too.

That's also one of the reasons why I'm so drawn to clean, simple Studio images. There are no extraneous elements to distract from what's important. It is one of the best records of what someone looks like at that point in time.. and an image that can be printed and framed to perfectly enhance an interior (green grass drives me a little nuts since there's nothing in my house that color would go with, while neutral white and gray go with everything!).

And I'm also a fan of color! I know black and white photography is very classic and artsy (or it can be, if done well), but COLOR says so much. The problem with color is that you really have to think about the resulting image. You have to plan and style the colors in the photograph to create something that is cohesive and harmonious in the end. Photographers that don't specialize in color don't tend to do that... but to me, color is everything.

So with every birthday, I make sure to get my boys into the Studio. I, too, want the kind of images I provide to my clients. And the next step, the one that most people forget about, is printing and framing. In fact, these photos don't look exactly how they're supposed to until they are printed. The screen distorts the brightness of an image (by being artificially back-lit) and some details actually get lost in digital form because of compression. But a Hahnemühle fine art print.. is almost magical in how good it looks. And you bet my son will be excited when he sees one of these photographs on the wall waiting for him today!