Last year, one of my clients booked a family session and made sure to include the grandparents. At the time, it probably just felt like a good idea. One of those, “Let’s quickly do a few with everyone while we’re here” moments.

Not long after that session, her mother-in-law died suddenly.

And just like that, those photos became something else entirely. Because now it is not just a nice family photo. It became a core memory. That’s the part people forget when they think about family photos. We tend to focus on the admin. What everyone will wear. Whether the kids will behave. Whether Dad will smile properly. Whether Gran even feels like being in front of the camera. Whether we should maybe wait until life is a little less busy, a little less messy, a little more ideal. But life does not really pause and present you with a neat, well-timed window for these things.

That is the real value of family photos. It is not about perfection. It is not about performance. It is not about creating some polished version of your life that never existed. It is about keeping something real. Something honest. Something your children and grandchildren can look back on one day and say, there she is. That was her. That was us. And I don’t mean that in a gloomy, doom-and-gloom kind of way. I mean it in the most practical, human way possible. Life is fragile. Families shift. Time moves fast. Kids grow. Parents age. Grandparents slow down. The faces around your table do not stay the same forever. That kind of thing cannot be recreated later.

And when people talk about legacy, that is what I think they really mean. Not stiff formal portraits that sit in a drawer. Not fake perfection. Not a glossy version of your family that looks nice but says nothing. Legacy is being able to look back and feel something real.

It is your children seeing who loved them.
It is them seeing where they came from.
It is them recognising expressions, features, and little mannerisms that live on in the family.
It is having actual photographs of the people who shaped their world.

And this is also where I think we need to be honest about the strange little world we’re living in now, where AI can generate almost anything. It can make a pretty picture. It can make a dreamy version of a family. It can smooth skin, change lighting, invent backgrounds, and spit out polished illustrations in ten seconds flat. This is  why I feel quite strongly about the difference between real photographs and all the polished AI-made versions of people floating around everywhere now. AI can create something pretty. But it cannot give you real. 

I think sometimes we underestimate how much that will matter later because right now we are still in the middle of living it. We are busy. We are tired. We are putting out fires and buying groceries and trying to answer school emails and get through the week with some form of dignity intact.

So if you’ve been meaning to organise a family session and keep putting it off, let this be your gentle nudge.

Include the grandparents.
Take the photo with the older hands and the younger ones together.
Get the three generations in one frame.
Do the full family photo, yes, but also do the smaller in-between ones.
The ones where your child sits on Grandma’s lap.
The ones where Grandpa stands slightly awkwardly but proudly with his people around him.

The ones that seem simple now, but will mean everything later.