Let’s get real. I mean it – REAL, as in real life.

As a working mom, I am always weighing things: time against my task list, investment vs. return, risk vs. reward. You with me? There are a finite number of minutes in a day and days in a year. What about moments in a lifetime? We’re always weighing. Now add a career as a pro photographer and a three year old to your calculations…

How do I protect my need for clarity and cleanliness over chaos while still living a big life? And – for those of you who know me – how do I advocate publicly for capturing memories as your photographer and friend if I, Misty Case, am not willing to get a little dirty myself in my own space with my own kid?

Recently, I weighed the memories I could make with my Finley over the inevitable mess that my tired OCD self was going to have to clean up later. [NOTE: if you don’t think you’ll find sprinkles in the most outlandish places, you haven’t baked with a toddler lately.]

But then I weigh The Great Sprinkle Search against that face above.
Day in the Life (DITL) photo shoots are fun. They allow us to capture a slice of a moment, a micro-shot of an activity, in what I hope is a long life with this little human. Finley will never again be this age, with that hair and with those dirty hands and so many questions spilling out of him ever again. Worth it?

I decided that it absolutely was. Just like the Christmas advent calendar, the gingerbread houses, the glitter and craft times and the mud that comes in after he’s been “adventuring” in our yard, wrecking the most popular room in the house was worth it. Finley gets 18-ish years to be a kid. That’s it. After that he can chat with me about the mortgage rate he got, the job opportunity, the big and small life events, etc. He has the rest of his life to be a grown up. This is it. That’s what I say to myself. Right now: it’s about sugar cookies.

The downside for me on this day was that you couldn’t see me “in there” with Finley as I usually am, but I was in my element behind the lens. I was a relaxed documentarian, if not a fudge-covered co-conspirator.
When we shoot DITL (Day In The Life) images for families, we allow you to just create an event out of something you enjoy doing and you can be fully present while we handle the lighting, the angles and grabbing those moments before they are gone.

Picture perfect? Yes.
Mom approved, in that “I am IN CONTROL of the sugar intake?” No. Not even close.

And Finley was a bit hyper afterward, icing was in places icing shouldn’t go, but that part passed. Remember that, Fellow Mamas: a good sponge, a deep breath, the right playlist playing while you gather debris, and you’ll be glad you made the time.

We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs newborns and families, special events and portraits  of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2020 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.