A month at home with family and why photography feels more important than ever.
I spend a lot of time assuring my clients that their everyday routine—and all of the happy/sad/funny/boring/weird moments that are cultivated in the space of that routine—are worth capturing and looking back on. The month of November was my turn to live out that belief.
Shooting what it feels like, not what it looks like.
There are many little tricks that help keep my observational senses primed so that I can notice the emotional, the fleeting, in other words, the interesting—using a wide angle lens and shooting in it, not at it, slowing down. But perhaps my favorite mantra that I like to keep in mind is shoot what it feels like, not what it looks like.
Kids cry a lot—do you want to remember it?
As a documentary family photographer in Taipei, Taiwan—a place where true documentary family photography is virtually unheard of at the moment—I am always helping people put a name to the thing that they know they want deep down but don’t know what to call it or how to get it. Most of my clients also get posed photos or lifestyle photos to put in a Christmas card for Grandma, but for them, for the photos they hold in their hands and look back on while they’re crying laughing over the way their kid is wearing underwear on his head, they want real moments. They know that the kind of moments that elicit a deep emotional response don’t typically come from standing in a field at sunset, but most of them don’t realize that what they’re looking for is documentary photography until they find me.
Documenting Family on Vacation
I thought I knew what I would be photographing when I started documenting families: people at home among their things and their routine; wanting to preserve a slice of life while they were in their element. What I didn’t expect was how many people would hire me to document their families while they were out of their element, crammed in a hotel room with underwear drying on a shower curtain and suitcases that looked like they had projectile vomited diapers and onesies across the room.
Word Muses
I’ve done some online training for documentary family photography that suggests identifying a muse once you arrive for a session. This doesn’t mean that you only photograph this person, but the idea is that most of the interesting things happen around the muse. If you keep your eye on the muse and what they’re doing, you’ll end up with better storytelling photos for everyone.
I sometimes do this, but what’s even more helpful to me is latching onto certain word themes that come up repeatedly when I’m chatting with a client. If it keeps coming up, there’s a deeper story happening here. They’re no longer just words, but symbols for something deeply meaningful to this family.
The Beginning
I started my documentary family photography business in Taipei last March without having any idea if anyone even wanted these kinds of photos; I only knew that these were the photos I wanted to make.