What is documentary photography?

In five years time when you're looking back at this stage in your life, what do you think will come to mind?

What does your day look like?

What habits do your loved ones display that they might soon grow out of?

What are the things that drive you completely crazy?

Which are the moments that overwhelm you with emotion and make you wish you could stop time? 

I want to capture the raw, authentic stories of your life. 

What do those stories look like?

It is where you live. Whether that's the home of your dreams or the quirky little apartment that you can just about afford. It's the loving way you've decorated each room to your current tastes, or the way you're trying to mask your landlord's decorating style!

The favourite toy clutched in little hands. The toy looking a little worse for wear from its travels with your little one. The toy that when it goes in the washing machine your child sits, watching their most precious possession spinning round and round amid the suds.

The long curls you love that make you postpone booking a haircut even though you know you really should.

The outfit they adore and refuse to take off. You know the one; it's the one you have to wrestle them out of when you can't stand the smell any longer!

It's the way your other half interacts with you, the intimate moments of affection: when he hugs you from behind as you're working; the way he looks at you; how he greets you when he gets in from work.

It's the mundane jobs that make up the every day: the folding of washing, the vacuuming, cooking of meals, food shops, washing dishes - the list is endless.

Sticky fingerprints, toys mingled with beauty products, a potty in the corner of every room - the signs that children live here.

It's the reading of that book, the one you've read to your child more times than you can count, the one you know by heart. Yet it's still the one they choose from the bookcase and snuggle in tight next to you so they can look at the pictures.

It's the school run. The school bag swinging as they run from their classroom to greet you.

It's dinner time, whether that goes smoothly because you've cooked them their unhealthy favourite, or the complete meltdown that happens every other day and makes you wonder why you bother.

It's downtime once the children have gone to bed, watching a movie and drowning your woes in chocolate or a take-away meal.

 

It's the good mixed with the bad. It's your life, no staging, no direction from a photographer. It's the moments that too quickly become memories. The stages they grow out of far too fast. The photographs that speak to the innermost depths of your heart because they capture the ones you love as they really are. In five years time, it's the visual record that will transport you back.

It is the real, authentic stories of your life now, lovingly captured before they become memories.

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Project Life Tutorial: One Photo, multiple pockets