As a business owner, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I want my business to be structured. Knowing everything inside-out, front to back, ensuring I am comfortable with my layout & the business I am selling to people.
Over many cups of tea (and many more chocolate chip cookies), I thought about why people need what I'm selling.
What makes what I'm selling (photography) so important, that people NEED it?
The short of it? You don't. You don't need what I'm selling.
No one in this world NEEDS a portrait. No one.
I could go the rest of my life, never having my portrait taken, never photographing my friends & family, never turning those images into beautiful wall art to display in our home. But we don't make these kinds of decisions with our head; we make them with our heart.
When I look around my home, I see walls covered in framed photographs, shelves holding albums and more framed photos. Every one of those photographs holding memories; a moment in time, frozen and saved for our family to cherish for years to come. I see first birthdays, "I do's", lives beginning & lives gone too soon.
Finally, it hits me, 'I'm not selling photographs, I'm selling memories'.
When we go on holiday or visit a new place, we buy something to remind us of our time there & the memories we made.
It's like taking your kids to the zoo for the first time. You don't actually need that stuffed tiger from the gift store, and if we're being honest, they probably have far too many stuffed animals at home already.
But we still buy it. Why? Because it will serve as a reminder for the first time they saw a real tiger.
When you're bagging up their toys for good-will as they start to get older, you stop at that little stuffed tiger, remembering what life was like to pack a huge baby bag full of 101 items, to navigate narrow paths with a pram, to hold that little baby up to the glass so she could see the tigers for herself.
Just like every other parent, we put that tiger back where it belongs.
That's what a photograph holds! It holds memories and feelings.
My dad has a really nice photo of my sister and I when we were kids. It's one of the very few where we're dressed nicely and both smiling. I hate it. Why? Because it was taken right in the middle of our parent's separation and those are the memories and feelings that photographs holds - that's the power of a single photograph! It takes you right back to how you felt in that very moment. Could I go on with life, never having family photographs? Sure. Would I deny myself & my family the chance to create life-long memories? No. I love that feeling of sitting in our living room & looking at all the memories we've captured over the years, knowing that one day, our kids will grow up & probably have families of their own, & eventually, my husband & I will pass on, leaving our captured memories behind for our children & their families to cherish.
No matter how grey we become, or how much our memory fades, a single photograph has the ability to take you right back to that moment. When life changes, for better or worse, we find ourselves going back to those photographs. Because whether it's a graduation, a wedding, a birthday or a loved one gone, photographs are all we have to hold onto when those pieces of our lives change and those moments are gone.
