When a Sense of Place Matters: Capturing Taipei in a Family Photoshoot

When you look at old family photos, are you only interested in the people, or do you also love noticing all of the tiny details that make that other important character in your family story known? The weird cat clock with the moving tail on your grandmother’s wall, the den with the bean bags that all of the cousins watched that one VHS of Little Women (Winona Ryder version, of course) a million times. All of these details help us to know this important character (and by extension, you!). The character I’m referring to, of course, is Place.

Place isn’t just the location where you happen to live. It’s the guiding hand that influences you in a million tiny ways. Think of a child learning how to walk, and how the experience of that will be different depending on whether they’re living in a suburb in the States with a backyard or a high-rise apartment in Taipei with big, brightly colored foam squares on the hard floor. Think of how the experience of popping into the 7-Eleven in Taipei for an ice cream on a hot day is different from running after the ice cream truck on your childhood street. (Also, do they still have ice cream trucks?)

As a documentary photographer, I look for the supporting details of the family story almost as much as I focus on the people and their relationships. I know that twenty or thirty years from now, your kids will get a warm feeling when they see something about where they lived that triggers a happy memory—the favorite ice cream at FamilyMart, the kind security guard in their building, the way fruit was always on the table in a big bowl with a chip on the side. This is Place.

I know that I’ve truly connected with the right clients when capturing a sense of place in their photos is important to them. I love Taipei (I’ve been here for almost twenty years!) and I love it when other people love Taipei and want to capture how the city adds its own special textures and colors to their memories. The photos below are from a 4-hour documentary family photography session with a dear family that was moving back to the States the very next day! It was important to us to capture some favorite spots in their neighborhood as well as the bathtime routine in their apartment. I hope in the future, when they look back on these photos, they’ll remember who they were together in a place they loved.