Behind the Lens & Between the Feedings: Dispatch №8

She's the most photographed person I know

Nothing could have prepared me for the inevitable.

A couple of weeks ago I got the notification that my iCloud storage was nearly full. And I pay for space. A not insignificant amount of space.

I started tapping around to figure out what I could possibly delete. Screenshots. Expensed receipts. Apps I haven't opened since 2022. But then I got a little sidetracked and I started scrolling back to the day my daughter arrived and I think I can now officially confirm what my family has suspected for months.

She is the most photographed person I have ever had the pleasure of photographing.

Over 2,000 photos. In a few months. Of one very small person.

A family member asked me recently if there has been a single day of her life she hasn't been photographed. The honest answer is no. Every smile. Every outfit. Every nap. The morning she learned to roll onto her side I have you know I documented from approximately four angles. I cannot help it. She is a fascinating subject and I am a photographer and this is simply what happens when those two things collide.

The curation problem

Here's what nobody tells you about being a photographer with a newborn: the volume becomes its own problem.

I have spent years helping couples and families build archives they can actually live with — galleries that are edited down to the frames that matter, where every image earns its place. I know how to cull. I do it professionally. And yet here I am, completely unable to delete a single slightly-out-of-focus photo of my daughter mid-yawn because what if I forget that yawn?

I've started culling. Just started. And it turns out that going through 2,000 photos of your own child is a completely different experience from going through a thousand frames from a wedding. With a wedding, the instinct is clean and fast. Keep what tells the story, cut the rest. With her, every photo feels like evidence of a moment that is already gone. The reluctance to let go isn't about the photo. It's about the time.

What I'm actually keeping

The professional in me has had to have a quiet word with the mom in me about this.

The standard I'm landing on is simple: keep the photos that spark something when you look at them. Not the ones that document that she almost smiled, or that the light was pretty good, or that she was wearing a particularly cute outfit. The ones that stop you mid-scroll. The ones where something true was caught.

The rest, and I say this as someone who has deleted exactly twelve photos so far, can go.

The other thing I'm learning

There is a version of this where the camera stays in the bag.

I wrote in Dispatch №6 about the iPhone always being there, always ready, never missing a moment. And I stand by that. But I'm also learning that some moments are just for living. Not everything needs a frame. Not every smile needs to be captured to be remembered. Some of the best ones are already stored somewhere the iCloud can't touch.

More soon. 📸🤍