My Most Important, Meaningful Images Are Just On the Horizon

by Sean Setters

Pictured above is my wife, Alexis, and as you can probably tell – in mid-September, assuming no unforeseen calamity arises – our life is going to change in a very dramatic way. We're expecting a girl.

Our preparations for the new arrival have been going on for months. A crib has replaced the bed in the second bedroom, new curtains adorn the windows and a matching rug ties it all together. And all those things would all look great if it weren't for the tons of boxes filling the room containing car seats, tiny clothes, baby wipes, diapers, a diaper bag and all the other things seemingly necessary for a child to survive infancy. Of course, we're very fortunate to be experiencing a clutter problem. Those boxes will help us through the challenging months ahead.

Even before my wife and I were actually expecting a child, we had started preparing in our own ways. For Alexis, that meant hand knitting baby accessories that would someday keep miniature hands and feet warm. Those handmade accessories came in handy for notifying close friends and family of the expected arrival.

As for me, I started preparing by purchasing used baby photography props from local photographers and stacking them in a pile in the corner of my studio. But that pile of baskets, ribbons, fuzzy blankets and knitted hats got me thinking – the images that I will look back on most fondly, the images that will be most dear to me, I haven't even taken yet. Bryan's been hammering this point home in many of his portrait lens reviews and in the captions of many of the pictures that he posts to the site; the most important pictures you will ever take will be of the ones you love. Birthday parties, sporting events, vacations, family get-togethers, graduations, and many more events are all great reasons to have a camera and an appropriate lens readily available. Increasing height, missing teeth and hairdos that will be well out of style in the next decade should all be documented formally on a monthly basis.

It's at this point in my life that I'm most happy to have a pretty well fleshed-out photography kit. I know that it's going to be well used over the next few years, and I look forward to looking back at the images created and wondering, "Where did the time go?"