Why I Hire a Professional Photographer on Vacation

One thing my kids and I love to do regularly is relive a travel experience by sorting through our vacation photos. I am one of those moms who take a million photos trying to document every second, and when I return home, print a thousand or so to put into photo albums. The problem is I am usually missing from half of those photos because I am the one behind the camera! We do the most common approach where we ask a stranger to snap a photo for us, but the chances of that stranger capturing what I was going for is 50/50.

My other struggle is getting everyone to corporate. My “Stand closer together” and “Look at the camera but tilt your head a little to the right” directions hardly ever yield the photo I was hoping for. Not to mention, since I am not a professional and rely on my cell phone as my only camera source, I always end up with more than a handful of blurry photos and photos with important landmarks or a person cropped off.

Twice now I hired professional photographers to capture our vacation family photos and both times, we were blown away by the quality and beauty of the photos!

For Disneyland, I knew I wanted family photos ahead of the game because we were there to celebrate Jordan’s fourth birthday. I started Googling for photographers about two months before the trip and found Adam and Claudia Photography, a husband and wife team that specializes in Disneyland family photo sessions. We had tons of fun during the session, a truly unique way to chronicle a birthday. We will forever remember this trip and the memories we made by looking at these photos.

When we were in Mexico, for two days I noticed the same photographer taking photos of couples and families along the beach where we were playing and sun tanning. Imagine my surprise and delight when I learnt that the photographer, Mario Trejo Vega, partnered with the resort we were staying at! There was no way I or a random stranger could have taken such beautiful photos of our family much less make it look like we had the entire beach to ourselves!

Yes, it costs money to hire a professional but I choose to think of it as an investment. Photos speak a thousand words—the value of having these perfect moments with my family captured is priceless.