There’s a saying that goes, “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.” As a photographer, in my case this refers more to family photos. Thank goodness, we have always prioritized having our photos taken. While I’m amazing with other people’s children, I know that trying to capture our whole circus on my own with a tripod is virtually impossible. So we’ve captured the images and have a handful of favorites on our walls, but my shortfall: getting the albums designed and printed. So many years have gone by, and in my busy-ness with creating these gorgeous works of art for my clients, my own images have done exactly what I caution my clients about: they’ve sat on my hard drive untouched. For years. Always lingering on my to-do list, being pushed from one Sunday list to the next. I suspect that you can relate.
While my iPhone photos are a whole ‘nother project that I’ve yet to tackle, I’m so excited that I’ve ordered my family’s albums and they are going to be gorgeous. Thick, lay-flat albums, artfully designed (by me 😀) that will last for generations. It might take a few weeks before my lab reopens to actually print them and send them my way, but I’m absolutely thrilled to have checked it off of my list! Here’s a sneak peek of a few of my favorite family albums of ours!
The first one I designed - I started with most recent and moved backward in time - is our incredible family session with Jessie Hearn Photography that we photographed three days before our big move to Dallas. She captured my kiddos and their wild-at-heart spirits so perfectly, and I included so many collages of their sweet moments together and with each of us.
In 2018, we skipped the fancy field photos and did something completely different that perfectly captured our chaos of life with three kids ages 5 and under. I knew deep down that we weren’t in an age and stage that would be conducive to capturing anything remotely practical in an outdoor session - my boys were SO WILD in this stage - so we hired a friend and fellow photographer Susan Ryan Kalina to do a documentary “day in the life” session where we did all of our favorite things as a family at home - playing outside, playing “chase” in our house, and capturing our precious LONG bedtime routine. It was so perfectly US.
This one is from our amazing session with Rebecca Gould Photography back in 2017 at the VERY end of a cold fall in Chicago. I wanted to capture our session as close to Leila’s first birthday in late November as we could without literally freezing into blocks of ice!
2016 was the year of a zillion photos, and our family album is overflowing with cuteness - from our annual family photo session, this time with my friend Vlad from Yofi Photography, and then a maternity modeling session for the insanely talented Cherise Kiel Photography from Arizona, and Leila’s newborn session with Bethany Hope Photography - a true artist. If you haven’t noticed, our family has used a TON of different photographers. I love learning through experience from the many talented artists and business owners around me, and there are so many whom I admire for all sorts of different reasons. So our photos shift in style, from more posed, to more lifestyle, with lighter edits and darker edits and everything in between!
If you’ve made it this far, I hope you enjoyed a peek into our family’s history. All of these albums will be printed in stunning 12 by 12 inch albums so that my kids will be able to soak up these sweet memories long after my hard drive (or my external hard drive or the cloud) crashes.
And if you are reading this, thinking about how many images are still crowding your hard drive and you’d like to outsource this task, I just might be your girl. Whether I use the photographs from your family or newborn photo session with ME, or you have a print release from another photographer but need help from someone more hands-on who can help you to create these family heirlooms, I’d love to help. I offer either a simpler design service for ordering your album yourself or you can work with me to custom design your heirloom album that will be ordered through my world-class professional printing lab with lay-flat pages, archival inks and gorgeous leather, linen or velvet cover options for the cover. Albums will not ship until businesses reopen (since my print lab is part of the “non-essential” shut-down).
The beauty of this service is that it can be done completely remotely, so whether you’re in Dallas, the midwest or on the east or west coast, I’m happy to work with you without any risk to your health or mine!
If you’d like more information about this service, please email me at rachelfriedman1@gmail.com.
Stay well,
Rachel
Rachel is a fine art Family, Maternity and Newborn photographer in Plano, Texas, serving the entire Dallas Fort Worth metroplex via studio portrait sessions and outdoor on-location photography.