Letting Go of the Perfect Family Vacation Picture

This is a photo taken from our camping trip to Fort Flagler taken with my phone. When I was a perfectionist, I used to carry my big, very heavy camera around everywhere I went because I wanted to capture everything perfectly, including camping trips. I would capture every moment and the outcome was to have beautiful photos for photobooks for my kids to look at and inherit. While that was lovely, the problem with being behind the camera all the time when you’re with your family is that you’re not with your family. You are a third party observer capturing them while you’re physically and figuratively stepping away. While being a photographer has its benefits for the family, trying to photograph everything so I don’t miss anything (hello, scarcity mindset!) was keeping me from being fully present.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
For the past couple years, I’ve stopped taking pictures of everything and lugging my camera around. I’ve decided to be more intentional about what I choose to shoot so I do less of it and have chosen instead to be more present with my family. Besides, these are pictures I take for me because I enjoy it and that’s what matters and luckily, camera phones have come a long way so it is “good enough.” Not perfect but letting go of perfectionism means also letting go of the need for everything else to be perfect too.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I’m sure my kids will remember all of our camping trips. They still talk about the ones we’ve gone on years ago when they should be too young to remember.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀