We have this one, precious life…

The joy you felt dancing with your loved ones at your wedding, the happy tears when you heard that first cry from your new baby, the pride as you watched them take their first steps…these are the moments that make us who we are. The moments we want to bottle up and hold onto forever, the moments we want to go back and revisit. If we ask ourselves “what matters more to me than those moments?,” the answer is nothing. Nothing can matter more than this one precious, beautiful life we’ve been given and the moments that bring us to our knees.

So why do we believe this story we hear over and over?

The story of more. The story that we need to be busier, to be more, that more is always better. Our beautiful, sweet, perfect memories are enough. They’re more than enough. And they’re all that really matters—to hold onto them, to preserve them, to share our legacies with our family. And you know what we’re never, ever going to want to say to your children and grandchildren?

“Come here and let’s look at grandma’s old hard drives together.”

“Awww, I remember your first day of kindergarten. I wonder if I can still find that old post on Facebook with the pictures?”

“We had family pictures taken every year, but I never had them printed. I think I forgot to download a few sessions, or lost them when we got new computers.”

Oh, it hurts my heart to think about a future like this. As a mom, it taps into one of my greatest fears—what if I’m not doing enough to preserve my family’s memories? I have to be vulnerable here—due to some extenuating circumstances, I have about five pictures from my own childhood. Five. No record of first days of school, of Christmas mornings, of the story of me. It haunts me at night that the same could happen to my own family memories.

We try to combat this fear through more. We need more pictures—all the digital files, right? We have this belief that more pictures equals more safety for our memories. But I think that’s a riskier option; technology becomes obsolete and there are too many risks. Social media gets replaced with something newer and better, hard drives corrupt, our computers crash. Our memories aren’t preserved just because we have them on our computer.

Your memories are worthy of so much more than these screens

Our most precious memories are worthy of so much more than just being hidden away on a computer, of a few lousy Instagram likes, of just…this little rectangular screen that takes us away from the very memories we try to be present in. To be honest, this pandemic has changed me. I want the good stuff—the slow days with my family, to live in the moment with them, to capture and preserve everything that makes my life beautiful. And this screen just doesn’t seem as worth it any more.

I want my family to look back and remember their memories up on walls, photo albums filling bookshelves, and a mom who was so fulfilled with preserving our beautiful memories that she let go of the lie of more. What does this look like for me? It means I’m changing the way I preserve our own memories; I am becoming more intentional with displaying our images in my home, with printing our pictures in keepsake books that can be cherished for years to come, that I’m investing in what will truly serve my family.

Photography with purpose

You might be thinking “That’s great, Hannah…so what does this have to do with your business?”

As I’ve been feeling this transformation in my own personal life, I’ve been really intentional in the way I serve my client families, as well as my own. I know people are used to “all the digitals” so my focus on print products can feel old-fashioned or silly, but it’s what I believe in. I’ve scoured the globe to find print products I’ve fallen in love with (literally—my print products are all fulfilled from Poland and Croatia) that I can be confident will last for generations to come. I want to give my families the gift of truly preserving their memories, not just sending them some files to be buried on a hard drive somewhere.

You deserve more. Your memories deserve more.

Reach out today to preserve this one, beautiful life together.