Creative photo ideas for your little ones…

 

 

As the mother of a toddler, the comment I hear most often from other parents is "they grow up too fast!"  If you cruise facebook posts this time of year, you see senior pictures along with graduation announcements and read over and over again, “Where did the time go?” 

I know this sentiment is true even though my little one is only 2!  It seems like just yesterday we were in the delivery room welcoming him into the world.  I can’t believe two years has already passed.   I remember thinking at the time how far away ‘2 years old’ sounded.  Nine months seemed like forever back then!  Now the past 2 years are already gone and we have to rely on our fading memories and photographs to remember just how tiny our son was when he was born. 

I don’t know about you but when I was young, I remember my mother marking my height on the bedroom doorframe in pencil each year on my birthday.  I love this idea but if your family is like ours, we moved away from that house when I was 7 and those markings really don’t mean much to us anymore.  The doorframes probably have 6 new layers of paint on them by now and who knows if the house is even still standing.  So, while I am continuing the ‘doorframe tradition’ with our son, I am also documenting his change and growth by photographing him at each birthday with some special treasures we gathered when he was first born. 

At our very first photo shoot when he was just 10 days old, we gathered several items that we wanted to become part of his life as he grew.  Some items were family heirlooms of our own childhoods; other items were hobbies and interests of ours today. Everything from my favorite stuffed animal when I was a child to a camera, our guitar, the family cat, and even a matchbox car resembling daddy’s big Jeep.  We took creative photographs of each item with our tiny little one, then put them away to revisit as he grows. 

In April this year when our son turned 2, we did our 3^rd shoot with these items.  It was so much fun to see him relating to them differently and see the amazing changes in his size!  Probably the most memorable is the photo of him with our guitar.  As a newborn, he was small enough to perch on the side of the guitar and sleep.  Now he’s big enough to stand alongside it and ‘play’ the strings!  I am excited to see how he continues to change and grow and what our guitar will mean to him as he gets older.  I can’t imagine how much fun it will be to do HIS senior pictures with this guitar.  I’m sure I’ll have to hire someone else for that job – it’s hard to shoot when you’re crying!

I encourage all parents, regardless of whether you are a ‘photo mom’ taking your own snapshots or paying a professional studio for pictures… consider finding some meaningful items and incorporating them into your child’s next photo shoot.  If you’re expecting, be sure to bring them to your newborn’s first photo shoot.  If you’ve already got kids in various stages along the way, it’s not too late to connect them to generations past with family heirlooms and then watch how they change and grow each year as you continue to incorporate their special treasures along the way!