(I’ve been asked a dozen times). You may remember how much I HART their little girls clothes from past sessions from several years ago. I love the almost patchwork girliness of their line.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
The following images (circa 2005) woke me out of my reverie and allowed me to *really* look at images that back in the day I didn’t see as worthy of my time &\/or effort – you know because I was looking for THE expression, THE moment, THE shot. Images of my then 5 year old’s beautiful soulful expressions – images that, as a mom, I long for now that my baby has grown up and is on the edge of completing her first decade of life. My tunnel vision (for a long time) failed to encompass who WE are as a family, who THEY are as children, as sisters, as daughters. In my efforts to find THE SHOT (THE MOMENT, THE EXPRESSION) I failed to see LIFE.<\/p>\n
I now realize that in my quest for whatever perfection that perhaps never existed in the moment I neglected the real feelings, the real expression, the real THIS IS WHO THESE KIDS ARE, this is who my family is. Of the moment. Of all the moments.<\/p>\n
There’s two that stand out to me & here they are:<\/p>\n
![\"Child](\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/102905_140bw.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
She was still such a baby then – it’s funny how we (as parents) think of our oldest children as all grown up and perpetually think our youngest children remain babies. Perspective.<\/p>\n
This was October 2005 – I mislabeled it. LOL I’m more confused than my camera’s data.<\/p>\n
![\"mother](\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/102905bw2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My personal lesson is this: Life is too short to focus on perfection. None of us is perfect. I’m embracing this motto for my perspective of my family (as I struggle to accept it in myself). As we round the corner to 2010 it’s time to remind ourselves that life isn’t about moments of perfection, it’s about connections.<\/strong><\/p>\nLastly I leave you with this: Love often, anger lightly, forgive frequently. Live and rejoice in the imperfect.<\/p>\n
Namasté.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Words of photographic wisdom, don’t live for THE moment, live for THE moments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[661],"tags":[41,69],"class_list":["post-1199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chicago-child-photographer","tag-childrens-photographer","tag-professional-photographer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Minooka](\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/_DSF1950.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Channahon](\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/MatildaJane_DSF1952.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Children's](\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/d.jpg\")
<\/p>\n