1. Because time is flying by
I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling like time seems to pass more quickly every year. One minute I had a little baby boy and now suddenly he’s getting ready to graduate from high school. I just wish I could stop time! I can’t stop it, but moments can be frozen with photography. I can see him with his cute little blond curls and knuckle dimples anytime even though now he’s 6’2”. Once you have these images you can revisit your family at these stages again and again. Your children will never be this young again. Your family will never be exactly the way they are today. The time to capture now is now.

People tell me they’re too busy to book a session. They want to wait until things slow down a bit. Newsflash – life doesn’t get less busy. You may be knee deep in diaper changes and feedings now, but later it’ll be carpools, homework and soccer practices. The stages change, but life is always going to be full. We can always find time for things that are important to us; and this should be one of them. Your future self thanks you.

2. Because you need to be in photos, too
In so many cases, one parent is the family photographer – diligently capturing those soccer games and birthday parties – but as a result not in any photographs. Your children want photographs of you and with you, and you owe it to them to do that.

3. Because your family doesn’t care what you look like
The excuse I hear the most for not booking a session is, “I want to lose weight before I get photos taken.” Well. I have to say that when I look back at photos of my mom and me, or old photos of my long gone relatives, never once have I thought to myself, “Boy, she should have waited to take this photo until she was thinner.” And neither will your children. The fact is, whatever your weight is right now is the way your family has been seeing you anyway – they love you and will want to remember you just as you are. (Besides, do you think if there are no photos of the weight then it didn't happen? Come. On.)

If you don’t want to capture yourself as you currently look in photos, what are your actions teaching your children? Are you saying that you are only worthy of remembering if you meet some sort of ideal criteria? We are all works in progress, and the fact that we are here on the planet and have people we love and love us is reason enough to get in front of the lens. And, not that I don’t have confidence in your weight loss goals, but what if you never lose that weight? You’ll live out your life with no photos of you for your family to cherish one you’re gone. So, listen…get photos taken now. And next year. And the year after that. Sometimes you might be heavier. Sometimes you might be thinner. Your family doesn’t care what you look like. They love you the way you love them. And they deserve to see that love in photographs.

4. Because you just never know
Hopefully you’ll have many, many years of family memories ahead of you. But none of us knows that for sure. And if something were to happen to you or one of your family members, the only thing people have to turn to to remember are the photos.

5. Because this is a great experience in and of itself (really!)
People (most often dads) dread the shoot as something that is going to be awkward and tedious. Maybe they’re scarred from their own family photo memories (in my house we got dressed up in scratchy clothes and trooped down to the local Olan Mills to pose stiffly in front of the fake backdrops and rest our hands on those weird carpeted little props – remember those?) This scene couldn’t be farther from a Christie Spencer Photography shoot! My everyday magic sessions consist of a family doing something fun together – be it making cookies and playing tickle fight on the couch to heading out into a field and jumping off logs and picking wildflowers. This concentrated time just being a family and paying 100% attention to one another doesn’t happen very often in our busy, multitasking lives. We are often rushing from one thing to another, maybe checking our phones as we interact with our kids. More than once it’s been reported back to me that kids say the shoot was the “best day ever” and I think it’s because the kids just really love that concentrated quality time with their parents.