A Photographer’s Honest Take: Why One Family Photography Session a Year Isn’t Enough
I want to say something that might be a little uncomfortable coming from a photographer: One family photography session a year is not enough.
I know. I know what you’re thinking. You already feel guilty that it’s been two years since the last one. You don’t need me adding to the list. But stay with me for a minute, because this isn’t about guilt. It’s about something I’ve noticed after fifteen years of photographing families across the Pacific Northwest, and it’s something I think about every single time I hand a gallery over to a mom who tears up looking through the images.
The one-session-a-year model isn’t failing families because parents aren’t trying hard enough. It’s failing them because it was never designed to capture the way childhood actually moves.
Hi. I’m Markie. Wife, Mom & Photographer.
As a homeschooling mom of four, I get it when you say your life is beyond busy. Between sports, school activities and just trying to get to know your kids, it feels like you don’t have any time left to plan for family photos. That’s exactly why I started The Family Photo Membership. I watched my own kids grow faster than I could keep up with, and decided the best thing I could do for the families I serve was make consistent photography as easy as possible. I photograph alongside my daughter and my husband Jake, who handles video and officiates ceremonies when asked nicely.
The Myth of the Perfect Annual Family Photography Session
Here’s how the annual family photo usually goes. Sometime in October, someone remembers that the holiday card needs a photo. Texts are sent. A date is found. Outfits are coordinated, debated, and re-coordinated. A location is chosen. Everyone is told to be ready at three o’clock. But by three-fifteen, someone has spilled something. By three-thirty, at least one child is done. By four o’clock, you have your photos, a mild headache, and a vague sense that it didn’t quite capture what your family actually looks and feels like right now.
And then you do it again next October. That one session, that one afternoon, is doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting. It’s supposed to represent an entire year of your family’s life. An entire year of who your kids are, what they look like, how tall they’ve gotten, what they’re into, how they interact with each other. One session. One afternoon. Once a year.
Your family doesn’t live in one afternoon. Neither should your photos.
What actually happens in a year
My youngest was born in the spring. By the following spring, he was a completely different person. Not just bigger. Different. The way he laughed was different. The way he followed his siblings around was different. The words he was learning, the way he reached for me, the expression he made when he was concentrating on something, all of it was different. And the fall before? Gone. Just gone. I know it happened because I was there and because I have photographs, but I could not reconstruct it from memory alone.
I am a photographer. This is my job. And I still almost missed it.
Now multiply that across however many children you have, and across all the seasons of a year, and the math becomes a little overwhelming. Spring, when your daughter suddenly decided she only wanted to wear dresses and spent every afternoon in the garden. Summer, when your son learned to ride his bike and the look on his face when he finally let go is something you will try to describe to people for the rest of your life. Fall, when they started a new school year and stood at the door with their backpacks and grew up about six inches in a single photograph. Winter, when everyone piled on the couch under the same blanket and you thought, this. These are the things we should want to remember. One session in October does not hold all of that.
And sure, I know you’re thinking you could just photograph these moments yourself on your iPhone. But mama, then where does that put you in the photo? Want a good reason why you should get in the family photography session? Check out page 11 of our Documentary Magazine.
The photographer you hire once doesn’t know your kids
This is the part nobody talks about: When you book a photographer you’ve never worked with before, the first fifteen minutes of a session are essentially a warm-up period where everyone is getting comfortable. For some kids that’s five minutes. For others it’s the whole session. Shy kids, kids who are overwhelmed by strangers, kids who perform differently in front of a camera than they do at home, they need time. And during a one-hour session with a photographer who has never met them before, time is exactly what you don’t have.
I have photographed the Matta family since 2020. I have watched their kids grow from small children into real people with personalities and opinions and inside jokes. When I show up for their session now, the kids run toward me. They are relaxed before the camera is even out of the bag. Their faces in the photos are lit up faces of joy, not like the stiff, slightly self-conscious version that shows up when a stranger points a lens at you.
That ease is not something you can manufacture in a first session. It builds over time. It is one of the most valuable things consistent photography can give your family, and it is completely invisible until you have it.
The photographer who knows your kids is the photographer who captures their personalities.
What you actually lose when you wait
I want to be specific here, because I think the word ‘memories’ has been used so many times that it has lost some of its weight. We all understand our memories aren’t perfect, but those things we really want to hold onto are never the ones taken during an annual family photography session.
You lose the gap between the front teeth that your daughter had for exactly eight months in second grade before the adult teeth came in. You lose the way your son held his stuffed elephant every single day until one day he just stopped. You lose the exact sound of the way they said a word wrong that you always meant to video and never did. You lose the phase, the dinosaur phase, the princess phase, the phase where they were obsessed with a specific song and sang it constantly, those moments that felt so permanent and then ended so quietly you barely noticed.
These are not small things. They are the texture of childhood. They are what your kids will want to know about themselves someday, and what you will want to be able to show them. You cannot go back and photograph October. You can only photograph now.
Why I built the Family Photo Membership
I spent years watching this happen. Families who booked me once and then didn’t come back until three years had passed and their toddler was now in kindergarten. Moms who scrolled through old phone photos at a session and got quiet, thinking about what they hadn’t captured. Parents who said, I wish we had done this sooner, meaning not this session, but all the family photography sessions in between.
I am a mom of four. I understand the friction. I understand that booking a photographer feels like one more thing on a list that is already too long. I understand that it is hard to prioritize something that feels optional when everything else feels urgent.
The Family Photo Membership exists because I wanted to remove all of that friction. You join once. You’re on my list. We plan out your yearly sessions, and you get priority dates when I don’t book to the public (like my weekends). I know your kids, I know your family’s rhythm, and I show up for you across the seasons, not just in October, not just when you remember to book, not just when you have time to coordinate outfits and find a date and send the emails. Consistently. All year. For as long as your family is in this season.
What consistent photography actually gives you
It gives you a record. Not a highlight reel, not a curated grid, but an actual record of what your family looked and felt like as it was happening. It gives you children who are comfortable in front of a camera because they have grown up with one nearby, held by someone they trust. It gives you images that look like your life, not like a performance of your life. It gives you the missing front teeth, and the stuffed elephant and the wrong word said the right way and the phase you thought would last forever.
And eventually, whether it’s tomorrow or years from now, when your kids are grown and you are sitting with a stack of albums or scrolling through a gallery from a Tuesday afternoon in March when nothing special happened and everything was ordinary and everyone was exactly who they were that day, it gives you that.
That is what I think is worth photographing. Not the perfect day but the every day.
The Family Photo Membership
If this resonates with you, I’d love to tell you more about how the membership works. It’s designed for exactly the families I described above: busy, real, full of kids who grow too fast and ordinary moments that deserve to be kept. Spots are limited each year, and membership families get priority booking for all sessions and events, including the Santa Experience and seasonal minis. Learn more and join at markiejonesweddings.com/the-family-photo-membership
