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Two and a half years of images and I forgot what I was actually looking for...
I’ve been sitting here for the past few hours going through two and a half years of images.
The reason I started was practical. There are some photography awards coming up and I haven’t entered in two years. Brain space. Time. The usual suspects. So I thought I’d have a dig through and see what I’ve got.
Here’s the thing about me and awards.
I have over 200 of them. A few trophies. Some significant ones I’m genuinely proud of. I’ve also been judging at state, national and international level for more than twenty years, which means I know exactly what panels are looking for and I am brutally critical of my own work because of it.
And I’ll be completely honest with you: I’m not that photographer.
You know the one. The big dramatic image, technically flawless, possibly photoshopped within an inch of its life, designed specifically to make a judging panel cry in under three seconds. Those images win. They deserve to win. They’re extraordinary.
That’s just not what I do.
Twenty-six years as a family photographer will do that to you. I photograph families being families. The chaos, the silliness, the kid who absolutely did not want to be there and then had the best time. I enter awards with images I made for real clients in real moments, not images I went out and manufactured specifically to collect a trophy. I coast through. Sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes it isn’t.
But here’s what happened today that I wasn’t expecting.
Somewhere between looking for “award-worthy” and moving on to the next folder, I stopped looking for awards altogether.
Because the memories started finding me instead.
This family who were so nervous at the start they could barely look at each other, and by the end were absolutely losing it in the best possible way. That kid who did the thing. That parent who couldn’t hold it together. The one where it rained and nobody cared. The dog who had opinions about everything.
Session after session after session.
And I realised I wasn’t thinking about whether any of these would score well. I was just sitting there grinning like an idiot at my laptop, genuinely grateful that these people let me be there.
This is the soppy bit. I’m aware.
But I’ve photographed over 1,500 families across 26 years — from Launceston to Bayside Melbourne and everywhere in between — and going back through even a small slice of that work reminds me of something important: these aren’t just files in a folder. These are people’s actual lives. The chaos and the noise and the love and the mess of it.
When I find an image that makes me feel something while I’m looking for an award entry, that’s not a bonus. That’s the whole point of family photography.
So yes, I’ll probably enter some awards. I might coast through, I might surprise myself. Either way.
I’ve already won.
