I know what it feels like to watch your kids change right in front of you—to swear they looked younger just YESTERDAY, to suddenly realize they stopped doing that funny little thing they always did, or to scroll through your camera roll and wonder how you have 4,000 pictures of them and barely any with you in them.

That’s why family sessions mean so much to me. I get to freeze a family exactly as they are right now. Not just the perfectly coordinated, everyone-looking-at-the-camera version of them—but the real one. The personalities, the relationships, the way everyone fits together in a way that will never look exactly like this again.

And knowing that someday one of those photographs might become the one someone would give anything to step back into? That makes this work feel pretty damn special.