Last week you met Cayla and saw the fun shoots her folks arranged for her to have leading up to her Bat-Mitzvah, you can read the whole blog post here. Once the party was done and Cayla celebrated her actual birthday I was there to capture her step into adulthood.

After 12 years of watching Cayla grow into the beautiful young woman she is, it really was such a privilege to capture these final images of her before I left. It was the sweetest moment as we ended the session when Cayla hugged me and asked who would be there to take her pictures now that I was leaving because I’d been there her whole life!!

It was such a wonderful moment for me, because often the familiarity of doing my job becomes just that…a job and I forget the significance and importance behind what I do. When Cayla said she was sad because I wouldn’t be there to capture the other significant milestones she has yet to encounter, it reminded me that as photographers, what we do matters to the people we have the privilege of meeting along the way.

We are blessed to be invited into their lives to capture their significant memories or special occasions and it is an honour that we should never take for granted. We get to be included in their happiest days and help them remember those days for years to come as they look back on the images we captured for them. Images that will bring to mind these important days.

Capture the memories

In the busyness of everyday life, it is so easy to put off the family shoot, or relegate the occasion to something not “that” important to warrant hiring a professional photographer. This is where we can take a feather out of Stacey, Cayla’s moms book! She always made sure she captured every big occasion and then included a family shoot in-between to make sure she captured the memories as her girls grew and got bigger.

The years go by so quickly and before we are even aware, our kids are on the brink of adulthood and we forget how little and cute they used to be. When we capture the memories along the way, we make sure that we will always have reminders of how little they once were and I can promise you that kids LOVE looking back on their baby pictures and hearing the stories behind the photo’s. Both my boys LOVE to see the pictures I have taken of them over the years (and there are thousands… hahaha) and hearing the stories behind them. They can pretend it’s “uncool” for their mom to always be taking pictures of them, but they secretly love it and they are going to be SO grateful one day when they have all these memories to share with their own children.

So without further ado, here are Cayla’s official birthday images as she became Bat-Mitzvah!! I hope you enjoy them.