Family Documentary Photography: What it isn't

Reportage, documentary, photojournalism for families is NOT Lifestyle photography

I would say that documentary photography is a bit more hard core than lifestyle photography. Lifestyle photography is celebrating the idea of a perfect life. Documentary photography is celebrating the idea of real life.  

While the documentary family photographer wants to capture the beauty of real family life, which includes more than just happiness, love and joy. Besides from happiness and love it also include chaos, tantrums and tears. 

It is important were you are; the environment can not just serve as a backdrop. It has to make sense to the picture, because it adds another deeper dimension.  

The documentary photographer lets the moment evolve by itself and there is never any posing or acting in front of the camera so all expressions and emotions and captured naturally, without any direction from the photographer. And all emotions are welcome.

everything that is in the scene belongs exactly there and as a documentary photographer, I decide with how I choose to compose the scene if I will use those elements or not – it is not my job to change how their life and home looks, but rather to capture, in the most beautiful way possible how their life feels; and

when you mess around with the scene, people are aware that they are “on a photo shoot”.

Be in the home with the family and capture the mundane, not necessarily exciting, but memorable moments. It’s the kids playing with their favorite toys, the way they wrestle and argue and cuddle and cry. It’s the way a brother rolls his eyes and Mom catches a sneeze. It’s the diaper changes, the meal prepping, the Wednesday night dinners at the table together, parts of childhood that we all remember growing up.

I really think the main difference is that I capture a moment that would have otherwise happened no matter if I had my camera with me or not. 

what's better than real life?

words natter: 

- lifestyle: editorial... beautified version of reality (faked candid)

- reportage: pure, unedulcorated witnessing the situation 

in an age where more and more things are faked (social media lives), more and more people crave authenticity. 

 Hipsterism is about that. It's about finding meaning, authenticity. It's why old is new again because it feels more real... except that hipsterism is posturing.  

As a business owner, I have to use social media a lot... but it was starting to be really detrimental to my mental health... it was starting to become a problem... it created a lot of useless anxiety and disillusion.

Writers, artists will tell you that you start your career by writing, drawing and taking pictures of what you know, what you see. 

In our quest to find meaning, we often look too far... we want to create too much meaning. In modern art, the meaning is in the eye of the beholder. We infuse meaning into what we see. 

I cannot paint, draw, sculpt but I know how to react. My approach to art comes directly from what I see and how I react to it.