Photographing Childhood + A Travelling Dress
One little dress travelled a decent stretch and just so happened to pass through Perth on its route, where I took the opportunity to photograph my child on her own in it, before sending it on its way back to the states.
Perth Childhood Photographer Photographs Her Daughter In A Travelling Dress
“I just want photos of the kids. I don’t want to be in the photos. I don’t need to be in the photos.” That last sentence really really irks me, I believe EVERYONE needs to be in the photo at multiple stages throughout your kids lives. If you don’t know by now, then I’m here to let you know, that I’m a pretty big advocate for making sure that the parents - more so you, the Mama, gets in the frame with their children when it comes to having photos taken. I like to be able to practice what I preach too, I’m such a huge believer in this, but today I’m also going to put it out there and say that there is most definitely a time and a place where it’s just as appropriate to have only your kid/s being the ones in front of the camera during your photo session without you in it, such as the one that I’m sharing here that I did with my daughter.
If you are a part of the photography world, you may or may not have heard about the travelling dress collective before - basically it is what sounds. A dress that is collectively chosen amongst a group of likeminded photographers, which then gets sent around the world to each participant for them to photograph. I had always wanted to do one of these, and finally got my opportunity earlier this year to participate with a group of friends that I met online about 5 years ago now.
The dress chosen was a Joyfolie dress for our youngins. As it turns out, most of us either have kids or grandkids close enough in age that the dress was sized suitably for all. I personally was stoked with the colour choice, I mean that army/khaki green colour is one of my favs anyway and it suited perfectly with a location I had been hanging out to visit and shoot at. My daughter wasn’t all too happy on the day we decided to venture out, being winter, it was cold, and I was very thankful that my partner was able to tag along with us down to the Rockingham Salt Lakes, about 50km south of Perth, to help cheer her up. During our session, while of course there was a focus on the dress itself, I also knew that I hadn’t really taken as many photos of her lately, just her, on her own, focusing on some of her more grown up features.
The dress ended up travelling between 2 continent and 9 states with 11 photographers playing the game.
Unfortunately, not all 11 photographers had the means to blog their final images, but if you’re curious enough you’ll jump on over to instagram and scroll through the #littlewandererstravelingdressproject to view some of the others final images too.
