As the days get shorter and darkness creeps in earlier in the evening, I find myself doing all those tasks that I put off all summer long.  The other evening I went into my walk-in closet to start to organize and clean out clutter.  That closet holds some of my dearest memories from my children, both away at college now.  For instance, I have a box of their adoption announcements and another box containing their crafts from preschool and elementary school.  Call me a hoarder if you will, but now that they are out of the house, I treasure those items that bring me back to those moments in time. 

Want to know what takes up the biggest amount of space in that closet?  Photos, boxes and boxes of photos of my kids and family.  When my kids were young, there was no such thing as a digital camera only film.  Cell phones did not have cameras.   I treasure these photos, when I hold them in my hands I can feel the day they were taken and the memories are so vivid.  So I got to thinking about how my children will have these photos to show their children, and pass down to generations.  Whenever we visit my parents, we look through old family albums of me when I was a child growing up and my parent’s' when they were younger and my parents' family.  We love looking at those old black and whites and try to imagine what life was like.  The photos evoke emotions and feelings.     

This brings me to the point of this blog.  What will you and your children be looking at 10-15 years from now?  Will your digital photos disappear with your latest phone upgrade or computer upgrade?  What good is a photo if no one ever sees it, if it doesn’t evoke an emotion, a memory or a smell that brings you back to that moment in time?  Can you capture those emotions from a photo on a phone?  

How many times do I hear “I can’t remember the last time we had a family portrait taken”?  "We need to have a family portrait done, but I'm waiting for...." How about a photo of your elderly grandparents or parents?   How about a beautiful portrait of you that you can pass onto your family?  I love when my kids look at photos of my Mom and Dad and say, “Wow, Grandpa was good looking and look how beautiful Grandma was!”    What memories will you have after you’ve dropped your phone in water or your computer gets a virus and erases all your images that you never backed up?  Or never even captured that memory because you were waiting for the perfect moment?  

Capture your moments in time, print your photos of your children, your family, your parents, your dog! Place them in a photo book or an album or folio box.   It doesn’t cost more than a Latte at Starbucks to have those prints made!  Have a professional portrait done that your family will treasure forever and preserve those memories.  

Capture a moment in time!