Today is my and my husband’s 16th wedding anniversary. Hey! That’s a fair bit of time! For most, if not all of that time, I’ve been the primary photographer in our family (something that is a fairly familiar story across hetero couples, at least in the US). And for a lot of that time, Photography (with a capital P) has been something I’ve take at least fairly seriously.

Aside from our wedding photos, we really didn’t take a lot of photos of just the two of us. Our kids came along and they became my main focus in front of my lens, still not getting my husband and me out there. I noticed the gap in our collections of family photos, but didn’t really feel like “fixing” it. It was effort and work and it was so easy to be overly critical particularly of myself.

So, a few years ago, we became close friends with a family who would become Our People – our Framily. They were, neither of them, photographers, but you know what? They had photos of themselves. Sure, their wedding photos were on the wall, but there were also print outs of the photos they snapped of themselves at arms length – the selfies. They were at the state fair, they were on a hike, they were at a favorite restaurant, they were just them, together.

Noticing this, I decided to both stop and start simultaneously. I decided to stop worrying about whether a photo of the two of us was a Photo or not. I decided to start grabbing my husband and asking for a quick grin with him. And you know what? I’m so dang glad for that stop and start. Seeing these grinning photos pop up on our Alexa, the memories of meals, of trips, of moments and time spent showing up tacked to the fridge or our photo board. These are the things that matter. It never had to be a Photo. Take it yourself – the selfies matter just as much, if not more.

All the best,
Alison