I was looking through old photos last night from a few years ago. Family, friends, photos I had taken and then just left on my laptop because life got busy. 

There were hundreds of them from the first few years of Ps life. Some made me cringe as a photographer, others made me stop and think “oh my god did I really look like that!”

But the ones that had the biggest impact were the ones of P; and of me with him specifically. They made me pause and reflect how little he was, and how much our life has changed.

Then I found some of me with A before she was walking and that flooded through a whole host of different emotions! During covid they were some of the first self portraits I think I properly played with and I had forgotten about them!

Then I found photos with the kids big expressions. The faces that they still make now, just as older versions of themselves, and the little smiles or scrunched up noses they have grown out of. There’s one of P in Hermitage Park and I can see so much of each of his siblings in the way his face lights up.

I love photography that’s no secret, but to dig through pictures and find captures memories of my own little family that I had forgotten was a beautiful gift from my past self. I am grateful to her.

It’s why I think it’s so important to pause our busy lives to make time for photography. It’s also why I’m so passionate about motherhood photography (and fatherhood/parenthood) because as the person behind the camera, I see the beauty of your everyday little interactions with your kids and I want to freeze them; I want to suspend time and snap up those ordinary exchanges and wrap them up beautifully for you to hide away and open in a year or 2 or 10.

That you in the future might have forgotten how your child whispered into your ear while walking in the woods. Or how they felt up on your shoulders with their wellyboots by your chest. Or how they gifted you leaves and pinecones because to them they were beautiful treasures.

These tiny details feel so big now, but in 2, 5, 10 or 50 years, it’s the photographs that bring back the smells and sounds to your memory.

That’s why photography matters.

That’s why motherhood photography matters even more.

It isn’t for the Instagram post or Christmas card this year.

It’s for you. In the future. The you that has forgotten. The you that misses these moments. The you that wants to remember.

Capture your moments – you won’t regret it

Rohana x