There’s something about the last few days of December that feels suspended in time. The rush slows. The lights soften. The world takes a breath. It’s a quiet space between the year that’s ending and the one preparing to begin. And for me — and for so many of the families I photograph — this is when the meaning of a year becomes clear.
Not in the big events, though those matter too.
But in the photos.
Every year tells its own story, and 2025 was no exception. It was a year of growth, discovery, resilience, softness, chaos, laughter, and deep connection. And looking back through the images — both the ones I created in the studio and the ones families took on their phones — I’m struck by how much life can fit inside a single trip around the sun.
This is the story of 2025, told not through headlines or milestones, but through the camera and the moments we chose to hold onto.
The First Months: A Winter of Warmth and New Beginnings
The year began the way Minnesota winters always do — wrapped in sweaters, steam rising from mugs, snow dusting the windows, and families gathered close. January and February always bring a certain kind of intimacy into the studio. Babies swaddled against the cold. Toddlers with rosy cheeks. Parents sinking into the ease of being inside, unhurried.
Winter photos always remind me that even in the quietest seasons, life is happening in full color. Parents holding their babies just a little closer. Kids curled into blankets between shots. The soft glow of studio lighting mirroring the softness that winter demands. These early images become emotional bookmarks — a gentle beginning to the year’s visual story.
Spring’s Slow Bloom: Growth You Don’t Notice Until You Look Back
Spring is the season that sneaks up on you. One day everything is still, and the next day the world is awake and humming. When I look back at the spring photos from 2025 — both in the studio and in clients’ personal collections — I see so much growth that went unnoticed in real time.
Kids suddenly look taller. Expressions shift from baby-soft to little-kid confident. Families step outside again, breathing in the fresh air after a long winter indoors. Spring photos always reveal change, even if the people in them didn’t realize it was happening.
The light changes. The energy changes. The rhythms change.
And your photos quietly record it all.
Summer’s Bright Chaos: The Season That Feels Like Childhood
Summer is always loud, colorful, joyful, and beautifully unstructured. It’s a season where kids run barefoot, where pets join the adventures, where families say yes to spontaneity, and where the sun stretches late into the evening.
Summer 2025 was full of these moments — the kind that don’t feel significant until months later when they become your favorite memories. The photos from this season are often the most honest. Your real life, lived freely. Popsicles dripping. Grass stains. Windblown hair. Sun catching freckles. Parents laughing at something only their children would do.
Summer photos are the proof that childhood magic still exists — in simple days, in unplanned laughter, and in the kind of imperfection that makes memory vivid.
Fall’s Golden Chapter: The Season of Meaning and Milestones
Fall is the anchor of the calendar. It’s the time when families feel the passage of time most sharply. Back-to-school shifts. Schedules settle. The air cools. And the colors — oh, the colors — turn every corner of Minnesota into a backdrop worthy of a storybook.
Fall sessions in 2025 were full of depth. The warm layers, the soft textures, the windswept moments at golden hour, the leaves turning to fire around families who were a year older, a year wiser, and often a year more connected to their traditions.
This is always the season when parents tell me, “I can’t believe how much they’ve grown.” And they’re right — fall has a way of revealing growth more than any other time of year.
It becomes a visual checkpoint — a moment of reflection, wrapped in sweaters and warm tones.
Winter’s Return: A Closing Chapter Filled With Connection
By December, the year starts to fold in on itself again. The holiday sessions begin. Families bundle up in layers of wool and laughter. Kids walk into the studio wide-eyed at the sight of twinkle lights. Babies nestle into blankets. Parents breathe deeply in between all the chaos of the season.
This is the time when the meaning of the whole year shows up in the expressions. A sense of closeness. A sense of familiarity. A sense of gratitude for the life you built over the last twelve months.
Winter closes the story in the same way it opened it:
softly, warmly, intentionally.
The Hidden Story Your Photos Told Without You Realizing It
When you look at your images from 2025 — all of them, not just the holiday card favorite — you’ll see something deeper than individual moments. You’ll see:
How your children changed
How your relationships shifted
How your family grew
How your routines evolved
How you weathered the hard days
How you celebrated the bright ones
How time moved
How love stayed
This is the power of a year in photos.
They don’t just capture what happened.
They reveal who you were while it happened.
Even if your year felt chaotic, or imperfect, or overwhelming, your photos show that within all that noise, there was beauty. There was connection. There was life.
Why Year-End Reflection Through Photos Matters
We don’t always remember the truth of our year accurately. Memory blurs things — the hard moments loom larger, the good ones fall quietly underneath. Looking at your photos brings the truth back into focus.
You did more than you thought.
You loved more deeply than you realized.
You built a year full of moments worth remembering.
Reflection isn’t about perfection. It’s about presence.
Your photos give you the gift of presence, even in hindsight.
How to Carry Your 2025 Memories Into 2026
If you want to honor the story your photos told this year, you don’t need to overhaul your digital life or scrapbook your entire camera roll. You can keep it simple:
Choose a handful of favorites.
Print a few.
Create a small “2025 Highlights” album.
Put one image somewhere you’ll see it every day.
Create one new tradition for next year — a winter session, a fall routine, a summer ritual.
Let your photos continue to guide how you remember — and how you show up for — the coming year.
Looking Ahead
2025 was a year of stories — big, small, and everything in between. As we step into 2026, the thing I’m most grateful for — and most aware of — is that photography isn’t about creating perfection. It’s about preserving truth. It’s about documenting the real life that fills our days, not the curated version we think we should show.
Your photos mattered this year.
Your story mattered this year.
And I’m so honored to have been part of it.
Here’s to a new year of connection, growth, laughter, and memory — one frame at a time.
If you’re ready to begin 2026 with intention, book your winter or early spring family session. Let’s start the new year with new stories. Book them here!
