Take That Picture!

Do you take your own pictures of your kids? Family pictures? A few years ago I bought a really nice and expensive camera because I wanted to take professional pictures of my kids. We were in college and getting pictures taken was not an expense I wanted to have, but I still wanted to have some great pictures of my kids. And, as you would have it, pictures are still out of my price range and so taking my own pictures still makes the most sense.

School pictures were this week and to be completely honest, I never buy the pictures for a few reasons.

1- I find them pricey and we are a one income family.
2- I only really want the 8x10 picture but it is only offered as a bonus package.
3- The kids are wearing their uniforms.
4- I prefer pictures taken outside with scenery and cute clothes that portray my children's personalities.
5- I own a very nice camera and take my own pictures.

Now all this being said, I am not dissing school pictures-- I think school pictures are great-- I do purchase the class pictures and yearbooks for my kids. In a perfect world, I would probably have one of those picture frames with a large slot in the middle for the current picture, and then the 12 slots all around with pictures taken from Kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade. I love those! I really do! But it's just not how I roll. Instead, I have thousands of pictures of my family and kids on sd cards, on my camera and my phone, and many more saved on our external hard drives. There are so many in fact, that sometimes when my husband and go through them, we have forgotten that we had even taken the pictures in the first place. I do miss the day and age when we didn't have the option of saving our pictures and had to have them printed to be placed in photo albums and/or scrap books. We took less pictures then, but in a way that made them that more special.

One of the things that I struggle with about taking my own pictures is that I am constantly putting off going to get them printed. It's one of those lies I tell myself, "I'll do that tomorrow," or "..."next week," and "...next month for sure!" For some reason, making it down to my local Walgreens, with my sd card in hand (because I actually do go to Walgreens often, but forget to bring my sd card) just doesn't happen. Maybe it has something to do with 'mom brain' or the fact that in my head I have a checklist in the order of things I need to do, and getting the pictures printed always seems to be at the very tail end. Now, you're probably thinking-- this alone is a good reason to pay for school pictures. That is definitely a good argument, but for me the offset savings is still a big perk. I just really need to do a better job and actually get the pictures printed.

Most of the pictures I take are completely on the spot, not planned and because we are doing something great and fun and I just need to capture this moment. However, I actually do take my kids out for photo shoots and take them to scenic places to take their pictures. It's a half a day affair and I'm not sure that the kids completely love it, but I string them along anyways with promises of a prize of some sort at the very end. And the pictures at the end are darling!! It captures who they are, with genuine smiles and completely in their element. Also, it fills my heart to look back on those pictures after some time has passed, not only to reflect how young my children look, but to remember the memory of that day and how we came to have those pictures. Even though it may not be the best way to spend a Saturday morning according to my kids, I do hope that someday they will look back and appreciate yet one of the things we did together as a family and the memories that follow.

Today, Facebook is huge when it comes to sharing pictures! And so is Instagram, Snapchat, etc. But I really ever just use Facebook and don't have Instagram, so I can only really talk about Facebook. So, back to Facebook... that is where the majority of the pictures that I take on my phone end up. We have family all over the country and even the world and so sharing on Facebook is the easiest way to stay connected and share a glimpse of what we are doing in our lives. When I notice that I have a lot of pictures on my phone, I will start to load them onto Facebook and then delete them off of my phone. I guess I am using Facebook as a storage for my pictures; it's fast, easy and limitless when it comes to space. The downside to using Facebook however, is making sure that not just anyone can view your pictures. I have my setting so that only my Friends can see the pictures and no one else. I also make sure that 'location,' is turned off on my phone so that when I post the pictures, our location can't be tracked. It was something I read in an article a few years ago that I found helpful.

Hopefully after this post, I will take my children out for another photo shoot. I am taking pictures for my son's soccer team since my husband is coaching his team and they will be for FREE. ;) So I might as well take my kids out for a photo shoot too. For now, enjoy this picture I took a few years ago from a previous phot shoot and a few I took this summer while we were at the lake! And tune in for some current pictures coming soon.