The Photograph We Didn’t Know We’d Recreate

When I left my house for an extended family session at the International Peace Gardens, I had a plan. The groupings. The flow. The light.

What I didn’t expect was to recreate a well-loved photograph from years ago.

And moments like that are my favorite.

When the Taylor family reached out to me, she mentioned that her family was changing and that she wanted updated photos. It had been years since they had taken photos together, and so much had changed since then.

New sons-in-law. A beautiful granddaughter. And a youngest son who would soon be leaving home for a few years.

She told he how quickly it all seemed to happen. It felt like just yesterday her youngest was in middle school, and now he was grown and preparing to leave home.

I understood exactly what she meant. The last handful of years seem to have gone faster than any before them.

As we walked toward our location, we talked about how quickly life changes. How you can look at your family and realize that somehow an entire season has passed.

But when we started photographing, I didn’t see a family that had lost something.

I saw a family that had changed. Grown.

The oldest daughter with her young family. The second daughter laughing with her husband. Four kids confidently becoming adults. A little granddaughter who was perfectly happy running through the grass, being loved by everyone, and telling me all about her third birthday party.

And then, when I brought the original six of them together, something shifted.

The Photograph We Didn’t Plan For

I had asked them to move their heads closer together, and suddenly Mom remembered a photograph they had taken years ago.

She described it, and everyone immediately knew which one she meant.

It was a photograph that had been hanging in their home for years. A photograph everyone had memorized without realizing it.

So they recreated it.

No one needed any direction. They knew where everyone belonged. They knew exactly what she was talking about.

And I loved watching that happen.

The photograph will look different now. The faces are older. Everyone is taller. Their family has grown.

But the feeling is still there.

The same people who knew how to pile together all those years ago still move toward each other now.

I kept thinking about that as I finished the session.

This is their family, right now.

The season where their kids were little is gone. The season of having everyone under the same roof is changing. There will probably be more marriages, more grandchildren, and more changes than any of them can predict. It’s going to be great.

This version of their family exists right now. And now they have photographs of it.

Not just everyone looking at the camera, but the way they naturally move toward each other. The teasing. The laughter. The little girl everyone was watching. The couples who are building lives of their own. And the six people who still somehow fall into the same familiar rhythm when they’re together.

I loved photographing this family in one of my favorite locations. I hope when they look at these photos years from now, they don’t just see what their family looked like.

I hope they see how much they loved each other.