01/03/2026
🌿Like all photographers, I get plenty of enquiries that don’t turn into bookings and that’s ok. When someone does book, I never take it lightly. It feels like a real privilege. Usually they’ve seen my work, we’ve chatted on the phone or on zoom, and then they decide to welcome me into their home, their holidays, their very important days and their ordinary ones too.
Recently, after chatting with a family, they came back to say they’d decided not to book after discussing it together. These things happen, and I genuinely wished them well.
But it was the reason that stayed with me.
Some family members felt they wouldn’t fully enjoy the day if I (a photographer) was there. They worried they might feel self-conscious, which I completely get!
But I also know an extended family gathering for an 80th birthday will never happen again, in quite the same way.
I found myself imagining something else.
What if, after their celebration, we sat together at their kitchen table looking through an album of that day. Everyone there. All together. Happy.
And then what if I picked up that album and walked out the door with it under my arm?
Would they let me?
Would they say they felt too self-conscious to keep those memories?
That the photo of them laughing or hugging their Mam didn’t matter?
That Nanny wouldn’t treasure the picture of everyone together, because one of the kids was crying and someone didn’t like their jumper?
Of course not.
It would never happen.
Sometimes I wish I could do my job in reverse, deliver the album first, have the phone call afterwards, and only then take the photographs. Families would understand the value of the memories long before they realised how much they would mean.
Don and Mary came to Center Parcs Longford Forest to celebrate 60 years of marriage. Four generations of one family, created by their love, surrounded by their friends and neighbours who have shared that lifetime alongside them.
You’ll never regret having the photographs, but my guess is someday you might regret not having them.
