Family vacation photos. We all have them somewhere. 

Is there an old album tucked away somewhere with photos of you in a bathing suit cut in the style of the time? A series of images far back in the archives of your cell phone that provide a record of the time you saw that funny tree/sign/roadside attraction?

As a photographer, you’d think I’d have thousands of these photos, wouldn’t you? Records I’ve made of each and every moment of each trip from the years gone by. 

The truth is somewhat surprising. 

I have the records, but I didn’t make them. 

I don’t even bring my camera on most vacations these days. 

Instead I’ve made a conscious choice instead to book a session wherever we are with a local photographer to provide a record of our time together. 

Because I too, want those records, the images that will grace my walls as art now and will hopefully remain far after I am gone as a special memento for family members, much the way older photos of my own relatives are among my own treasured possessions.

These souvenirs capture my family in that space in time and offer us a window through which we can climb to revisit those treasured memories of time spent away from home, together, enjoying one another’s company and the chance to explore. 

In that sense, they are priceless in their value to me. Equally priceless, especially for me as the family’s unofficial recordkeeper, is the weight they remove from my shoulders. 

Handing over the role of taking our family vacation photos to another photographer provides me with an ultimate sense of freedom. I don’t have to record the moments. I can simply live them. 

I can head out on the whale watch without worry that I must post myself in such a way that I can stand steady on a rolling boat to capture the moment a fluke stands at attention above the waves. I can settle on the beach in nothing but a bathing suit and slather myself with sunscreen without worry that my smeary hands may leave residue on my camera. 

I can wander into the water without a worry about leaving said camera at the mercy of sun, sand, water and  — as much as I hate to think it, especially on vacation — thieves. 

I can bring my camera if I want to, but I don’t have to. 

I can still enjoy the magic of family memories captured for me, for my husband, for our daughter and for any future members of the family who may want to see those family vacation photos 10, 20, 50 years down the line. 

What they’ll see is a family enjoying themselves on vacation ... even the family record keeper. Because she got to taste freedom, at least for a few days.