This is what I want to give to my clients.
More life.
I am tired of setting people up against colorful walls and back alleys. I have deep appreciation and love for what I have done in the past, but I want more.
I want you to want more, too.
I want to dig deeper, I want to try harder, I want to gain more trust so people let down their walls and leave their house the way it was before I arrive. So they allow me in. Really, really in.
Our lives pass so quickly, and moments like this make up the most of it.
I have a burning desire and passion coming out of my eyeballs, to give this to you.
This is how your life looks.
Let me help you see it.
xo
Tara
YES! let’s start a freestyling movement ???
amen sista.
You have a wonderful way with words. Oh and you’re not too bad with a camera either. ;)
Yes I have to agree with your post, as photographers with our human limitations we try to capture a moment preserved in time, to be gazed upon in the future.
absolutely gorgeous pic. capturing a moment, a real moment, an every day moment and keeping it forever. what a treasure. your job is to see the ordinary moments that are really treasures and capture them. you have such an eye for seeing the beautiful in the ordinary—the lovely in the plain and simple. xo
i think this is my favorite image of yours. it’s beautiful.
yes, yes, yes! i just made the decision to ONLY accept sessions that are structured in this way. the blatant beauty in the everyday. now i am taking step back for a few months to regroup and restructure around this. you go tara. can’t wait to see the waves of life i am sure are on their way
With you 100%, Tara. I do this for our family all the time, and these are the shots that have the most meaning, the one’s that stir the soul, except I’m not in them, of course. So…next time you’re in Utah, I’d love to have you do this for us. A girl can dream, right?
amazing. LOVE it!
If some day you are planning to visit Buenos Aires, Argentina
I will be your first client here !!!
This photo is amazing !!!
Love your work !!!
THIS is what I love. THIS is real and more beautiful than any posed shot. I would love to hang a huge canvas like this of life with my family…REAL LIFE.
Sadly, what I find is that most people don’t want their real life captured. They want poses and coifed hair and no messes. And I want candid and I want to be ignored as the photographer and I want people to see the beauty in morning hair, dirty hands & feet, chocolate smeared faces. My hands down favorite photos are the ones where no one is looking at me.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful image. I really hope this family realizes what a treasure this captured moment is.
Beautifully said.
hear. hear.
awe, you are so very pure down to the core. i love it and can’t wait to see more.
COULDN’T AGREE MORE.
Oh my gosh…wish you lived in Holland. Or we somewhere close to you..I would ask you to come RIGHT AWAY! To document our lives, our little family. I would leave all the mesh the mesh, I wont comb my daughters hear,leave the dirty shirt on my son,and would not grab for my makeup.DH…yep, he’s just the way he is, ha ha , it would be hard, but I would do it! I would love it!
i could totally see you being a “day in the life photographer” where you come in for a whole day and take pix of a real life day! that would be awesome! I LOVE this shot!!!!!!!!!!!!
xoxo tara
Oh my goodness… brings back memories of my daughter at that age, her little platform bed next to my side of the bed, family coziness, reality at that moment. You have captured something that will be treasured forever Tara!! I hope you can find more clients that want this! Now I want to go through our old slides and revisit those moments 21 years ago… xo
i LOVE that you photographed a family with a crib attached to their bed as ours is. :O) This is exactly what I hope to do some day so these photos sing to me. I look forward to seeing more of it from you because if anyone can pull real life out of strangers, it’s YOU.
Love.
I loved the cosleeping part, but even more I liked that the child had minimal clothes on. Not from the perv stand point but from the fact that children are so strikingly beautiful, especially when they aren’t all dolled up, posing and made to act like goofballs. I often photograph my kids in the nude or undies and I have had push back from inlaws and others that think it is “wierd”….(some day I will silence those inner voices). Thanks for keeping it real…
this is perfection…
Okay… is this really life with that many pillows? And do they really sleep on those cool polka dot ones?! Totally joking.
Love, love, love this shot! I would totally let you into my life to photograph “real”… but I would totally have no money to bring you to Washington let alone to send you back. LOL. I’m sure you’re family would miss you. So I’ll just have to lust for your photography from afar. :(
a.
Perfect!
Happy to let you see my life, as it is! On a plane to Australia any time soon. If only. Love the shot Tara! Your work is always so inspiring.
I can’t even express how much I love this post. What you said and this image. SO amazingly true.
I can’t be more agree. This are the kind of pictures I’m always looking for. And this are the kind of pictures everybody wants in their life album… and this one is just perfect.
This days of really bad nights with our baby, this picture made me think about a new solution with the cradle right there… can you tell me if the cradle is just there or if there’s some piece or something joining it to the bed so that it does not move? Thanks!
And thanks for your lovely photo-work.
This is exactly what I want our next photos to look like. Every Sunday morning my kids climb into bed and watch the Movie Tarzan while we enjoy the snuggles and the little bit of extra sleep, and then we all go make pancakes together. Every Sunday morning I think that “These are the best moments of our lives” and I so badly want to capture it!
oh my goodness! amen.
seriously, can i start by sending you fifty dollars a month until i can pay for ONE OF THOSE!!! stunning. simply put.
this photo brought tears to my eyes even though it isn’t my family. i can’t even imagine how they felt when they saw what you were able to capture.
brilliant. <3
that is what i want!!
i was just thinking last week….i want someone to be with us for days and photograph the REAL life.
or i want to do that for other people.
i hear ya.
this is life.
it’s beautiful.
I would totally love something like these shots. I was actually thinking about this blog post last night was we played on our bed after bath time. :)
Can I just tell you how much I love your work. I love the real life. Tell me, what do you tell your clients when photographing them? Just pretend I am not here or what? How do you get them to act so natural?
so when are you coming over? our house is a mess and we are all ready!
Hear, hear. More, more, MORE!!!
Wow! I’m sooooo inspired!
I loved this post. This is exactly why I still read you after 3 years, because you are so real. Thanks Tara.
We love our colorful wall pics that we have from you, but we would treasure pics like this even more. Are you headed up to Montana anytime soon? C’mon up the kids would love Yellowstone!!
Oh Tara…i love everything you do: Color/no color, I think its all real life. I hope to have a session with you sometime in my future before my girls are gone (now at college 20/21)!! I guess I better hurry, but i need you to come to Lake Havasu:)) U will be in touch.
oops…that is supposed to say I will be in touch!! Love your work:)
Oh how I wish you were in MN. This is exactly what I am always craving – I joke about how I wish someone would just follow my family around on a random Saturday – but it’s just because I so desperately want those photos that capture us just as we are. All of us. Together.
I love this, I love what you are saying. You are reading my mind. I need to follow my heart and keep wanting to do this as well. Thank you for writing and showing this.
This is a brilliant image, love the casual feeling that you got, any family would love a portrait like that. Great job getting that personal with them. I strive to take images like that.
amen!
Fantastic words! I often feel the same way too, but it’s hard when living in a small country like Sweden where most people only hire a photographer for their wedding portraits… ;-) But I’m striving to give my wedding photography more life.
You are amazing, Tara. Just amazing!
So simple, yet so incredibly beautiful.
Amen to that :)
Births. This is why I photograph births. Raw, real, no walls, they let you in and embrace you with their experience. I walk away feeling connected and amazed at life and the miracle of it. Photographing and documenting and creating something so real changes you. Kudos to you for seeking it out!