I think we can all relate to the feeling of using our cameras as work tools so much that we forget why we fell in love with the art of photography in the first place. Any time I hit that point – when I feel burned out, creatively exhausted, or just don’t want to touch a camera – I think of my mom.
Growing up, it was an unspoken tradition for our little family of five to open up all of our photo books a few times a year to spend hours reminiscing over old memories. My mom was the documentarian in our family; the one who took most of the photos in those books, and the one who inspired me to buy my first camera in middle school. It was that spirit of preserving family memories that made me fall in love with photography, and it was that same spirit that I embodied when our family of 98 people flew to Italy together for a 10-day trip.