I talk a lot about the importance of existing in photographs, the importance of moms getting in the frame with their families. But it wouldn’t make sense for me to talk about it without getting in the picture myself, right? Well here I am! A few weeks ago we spent an afternoon with my good friend Jenna Christina. Jenna is a documentary photographer in the Bay Area and I admire her work a lot. While I lean a bit more on the lifestyle side of things with my photography, the photos I love most of our own family are the strictly documentary photos she’s taken (see our previous session with her here).

Are you wondering what the difference between Lifestyle and Documentary photography is? It can be a bit confusing, but very basically, documentary photography has absolutely no guided input from the photographer. They are there to observe and document what’s going on from their point of view. Lifestyle photographers give a bit more direction, they might ask you to move into better lighting, give your prompts or do some light posing. I feel like my style falls a little bit between the two approaches but since I do give some input, I call myself a lifestyle photographer.

I love having our photos taken by different photographers because it’s so interesting to see how each photographer has their own style and eye, and what they capture is always different (even in cases where two photographers and shooting the same thing). I appreciate these photos so much because they really capture the heart of our family at our most normal. It’s always nice to have “nice” photos of yourself, and we do those as well, but the documentary photos we have are the ones that feel most like us. <3