THE MUM WHO DIDN’T WANT TO BE IN THE PHOTOS
I’ve photographed a lot of women who didn’t really want to be there.
Not because they don’t love their families. Because they love them so much they feel like they didn’t want to be the thing that ruined the photos.
Early in my career I thought I could fix this. If I got the light right, found the right pose angle, maybe I could give them something they’d love. A photo where they felt beautiful. Where they looked, just for a moment, like someone who belonged in front of a camera.
Sometimes it worked. Often it didn’t. And when it didn’t, we both knew. The session felt strained. The results were fine but flat. The woman in the photos was trying to be something she wasn’t, and you could feel that in every frame.
It took me a while to understand what I was doing wrong.
I was trying to solve the wrong problem.
The women who came to me weren’t asking to look like models. They were asking to be in the photos with the people they loved. Those are completely different things, and I was so focused on the first one that I kept missing the second.
The sessions that changed everything for me were the ones where a woman came not for themselves, but for someone else. A daughter who wanted a photo with her mum. A husband who’d been asking for years. A family who just wanted everyone in the frame for once.
When that happened, something shifted. She stopped thinking about how she looked. She stopped waiting to be disappointed. She just sat with her daughter, or her husband, or her kids, and I took photos of that. Of them. Of the way her children leaned into her like she was the safest place in the world.
Those are some of the best photos I’ve ever taken.
Here’s what I’ve learned from photographing lots of families.
The photos were never supposed to be about her. They were supposed to be about who she loves. And when she understood that, really understood it, everything changed. Not her appearance. Not the light or the camera. Just what she understood the photos were actually for.
If you’ve been avoiding family photos because you don’t think you photograph well, I want to ask you something honestly.
When your kids are grown and they look back at photos from their childhood, what do you think they’ll see? Do you think they’ll notice your waistline? Do you think they’ll wish you’d waited until you looked different?
Or do you think they’ll just see their mum. And be glad she was there.
You don’t have to look like a model. You just have to show up.
That’s the whole job.
— Tony
