I got the most amazing email from Gabriel’s mother after his newborn photography session.  Here is what she said…

“…you have a amazing gift, you capture a moment of reality and make it more substantial than just a memory but also turn it into something more transcendental than a dream. It’s like being able to see a moment in time on more levels than it is possible to see while being present in the moment. You make a reality more real and more surreal at the same time. I wanted to thank you for applying that gift to my moments. Life and happiness are both such fleeting things…”

I can not tell you how much that touched me.  I have been thinking about her message ever since.  I love the wonderful way that she has with words.  And I have never thought of things that way before.  I have looked at my job from that documentary perspective.   My portraits help capture a moment in time to preserve those feelings, forever.  But now that I think about it, if I do my job as well as I hope to every time I will do just what this wonderful mother says.  Stunning portraits can make a moment even better than it was when first visited.  It is all about nostalgia.  Have you ever been to a place, enjoyed it and then left.  Then years later with layers and layers of memories to enhance those old feelings -revisited.  It is better than it ever was before.  Or perhaps you have sent a soldier away for a year.  You loved him before he left, but months and months of remembering and longing make that love even greater and stronger than it was when you parted.  There is great truth in the saying absence makes the heart grow stronger.  And like absence, distance and time can do the same thing.

Years from now, months from now, Gabriel’s mother will look at her sweet brand new son in this portrait and the moment she remembers will be like a dream – surreal…