One of my great passions in life is doing family research. There is something about old photos that can’t be replicated nor recreated. They have such value to me and one day a whole wall in my house will be dedicated to their photos and their stories. I have been watching the NBC show “Who Do You Think You Are?” and really compelled to get all the information I have gathered over the past 8 years into something you can hold and touch. Until now, most of what I have has been digital copies in folders on hard drives and in webpages. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org are great places to start if you are doing family history. So much of my job is about capturing memories. I ask myself where will these photos be in 100 years and who will freak out when they find a picture of their great grandparents on their wedding day. That is a huge part of why I want to get my photos into the hands of my clients. They are their photos, I just take them. I feel so blessed to be given this job as a historian and artist. I have always loved history and I have been conflicted with how to live life and capture it too. My wife loves to scrapbook and I obviously love to take pictures. We truly are a great match.

That being said, I encourage all of you to begin your search and start cataloging as much as you can. You can’t save everything (hording is not what we are going for here), but you can start with photos and stories that you write down in a journal. My wife and I have started journal for all of our children, one for ourselves, and one for me. I rarely get to write in them, but when I do, I make a point of leaving a clear picture of what my life looks like now. One day I hope that one of my children, grandchildren, or great grandchildren will appreciate them the way that I do.

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

From James Stokes Photography