Here you will find some of the celebrations, special occasions, and projects our team has been honored to document over the past 15 years.
My kids love sitting in our living room and looking through old albums and scrapbooks of our wedding, childhood, and college days. They love asking questions about the people in the pictures or why mommy’s hair looked funny and I love sharing those stories with them. Those are their roots, their visual legacy of who they are and where they came from. Unlike some families, we move every 4 years due to the industry my husband is in. We love the adventures that this brings but it does have a downside. The house my son learned to walk in is completely different than the one my daughter did. There isn’t just one family home where physical roots exist, there are many. As they have grown older, they want to see those places and feel a connection to their childhood. For us albums act as that visual link to who we are and where we have been. Early on, I understood this desire they had because it was similar to one that I experienced growing up.
While we didn’t move nearly as much as a kid as I do now, I remember having a desire to see the places my parents and my grandparents came from. My grandmother grew up in San Antonio, a place that we were blessed to live for a time and the ability to drive past the street she lived on was priceless to me. One of my favorite memories as a child was looking through old albums or shoe boxes of images while sitting on living room floors with family gathered around and listening to them tell stories of their childhood. If it was Christmas time, there as sure to be some Portuguese thrown around, to insure that we kids didn’t figure out what Santa Clause was bringing. See, my mom and uncles grew up in Brazil, sometimes with dirt floors and colorful Macaws. My grandparents were missionaries there and so Flan and Portuguese went hand in hand in their home, along with other cherished traditions like oranges and nuts in stockings. While I have yet to get the chance to go to Brazil, I feel connected to that place because of the images we looked at and the stories that we heard as kids.
Whether you move a lot like us or are living in a home that had been passed down for generations, start creating your own legacy now as you craft visual roots for your own family. That may look like printed images in shoe boxes for your kids to look through and leather bound wedding albums that are passed down with stories of your heritage from generation to generation. However, let me encourage you to please print your images. There is something sterile and removed from reality about sitting at your computer with your kids crowded around as you flip through pictures of the past. Give them something tangible to see, feel, and touch as you cuddle them on the couch telling stories of the past.
BRAND & WEB BY ASHLEY FERREIRA DESIGN
Copyright 2022 Meredith Ryncarz Photography LLC