What about you? Are you showing up in your images?

Often times we focus so much on documenting what is going on around us that we forget to get ourselves in the frame. I know that I struggle with this all the time. I want to be in the images, but I feel less than satisfied about how I look or how I feel. I assume that the kids don’t need to see photos of me, they see me everyday. But they do need to see photos of me. They need to see that I wasn’t just always behind the camera, that I lived those memories with them. And they also need to know that I had a life in addition to being their mother.

That’s all I have. That’s one year worth of thousands of photos of my family…and I’ve got 16 of myself. Most of which are of my feet. That’s not enough. I hope that you’re doing better than I am with this. The things that I see above that do make me happy: I see myself doing things I love – even if it’s just my feet in some. I love that we documented my height and I can see exactly when my kiddos have surpassed me. I need to work on documenting myself along with my family and I challenge you to do the same. Some of the people out there who I think do a great job of documenting themselves: Ali Edwards, Elise Cripe, Cathy Zielske, Elsie Larson. Take a bit of time to familiarize yourself with their online homes and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Good stuff.

Some areas that I’m going to work on with documenting myself:

• I’m going to ask someone to take a photo…either my husband or a kid, whoever.
• Master the art of the selfie. Elsie Larson has some great tips on selfies
• Use the timer feature on my phone and my big girl camera.
• Continue with the feet…I must admit, I like the feet images.
• Get over myself and my insecurities. Easier said than done, but if I’m expecting my kids to let me take photos of them, I can’t very well say no.

This post is part of a 31 day series. Read the first post here about documenting everyday life and see a list of all of the other posts in the series.