The Legacy of Visual Memories
As I sit here at my computer working on my next blog post to you, I had to stop what I was working on and save it for another blog post due to this pressing on my heart and what I feel God is urging me to share. In the light of the recent weeks’ events, things that are going on in the Middle East, service members being mobilized, and families separated due to deployment, this month I’m going to write about legacy.
First, let’s define legacy. Legacy is anything handed down from the past; from an ancestor or predecessor. You may wonder, “What does legacy have to do with photographs?” I believe that photographs are a window into the past. A record in history that someone was here or something happened.
Over the years, I’ve been one to share the importance of printing images from my client’s session so they have a physical recorded copy of that moment and the people in the photograph. I urge moms to get in front of the camera so there’s a visual recording for her children that she was there in their childhood, not just behind the camera all the time.
We never know what tomorrow will bring or what may happen on a deployment, so I urge you to take the time if you remotely think a deployment is on the horizon, or even in day-to-day life, take the time to get updated family portraits done. You’ll be thankful you have them.
This I can say from personal experience.
The last time we had family photos done with my mother- and father-in-law, sister-in-law, and her family was in 2010. During our many moves, not able to sync calendars with my sister-in-law who lived on the opposite side of the country from us, we finally came up with a time that would work during our last PCS back to Texas.
We it planned for Thanksgiving 2018, but little did we know that earlier in the spring during a routine surgery, my father-in-law would pass away from complications unexpected to even the doctors.
We never had that updated photo, and we’ve kicked ourselves for not being more intentional to get it.
I always tell my clients to do them, but I didn’t follow my own suggestions and thought we had time.
One year ago when my mother and sister-in-law came to visit for my husband’s promotion, my mother-in-law made it a point to request that the three of them have a new family portrait taken. It was tough for them, but she said she needed it because that’s what their family looks like now.
A huge hole is missing, and this is helping them down their path of healing.
I know this isn’t a happy-go-lucky post like the others, but as I shared in the beginning, this is pressing on my heart. I hope that you take away a reminder of the importance of having that recorded legacy that you’re here.
