Showcasing relationships while documenting your everyday life is such an important part of the images that you create. When you and your family look back at images of themselves, what do you want them to see?

When I look through the images of my children and the things and events that I photograph of our lives, seeing the relationships is what is the most important thing to me. I want my children to see that they loved each other. That they supported one another and participated in each others lives. I must admit…I know that I’m lucky. I have three kids who are very close in age and have become extremely close siblings. They do fight. They do argue. They do get bossy and sassy. But above all, they actually like being around each other. That makes for photographing them together and showcasing their relationships pretty easy. But I really want to go deeper than just images of them all together smiling at the camera. Don’t get me wrong, I love that image above. I love that my daughter is holding my son’s hand, that her arm is around her big brother, that their heads are all squished together. But my favorite images of them together are when they’re just being together. They are sitting next to each other while watching their little brother have a lesson, they’re playing catch together, they’re chatting with each other while doing chores. These everyday images of them together shows them that they liked each other even when I wasn’t asking them to smile for my “big” camera.

Some things to consider when trying to capture relationships in your images:

• step back – let the situation unfold and just be a fly on the wall and capture what you see
• photograph kids playing together
• get creative with different perspectives
• do your children participate in activities together? Photograph them together in that activity or show them supporting one another if they don’t participate in the same activities.
• encourage them to do more things together…they may resist at first, but you might be surprised at the outcome
• photograph your children interacting with their friends
• photograph your children and your other family members together
• photograph your outings…taking the kids to the store with you? Get some images of that.
• photograph them in the car…my kids sit in the back seat together, they’re a captive audience (see the title photo for this post about documenting everyday)
• try and think of other times that they must be together and encourage a quick friendly photo – the more you ask and make it happen, the more likely they’ll be to just let you do it (and get it over with).

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.