We’re used to seeing perfect images of family life plastered all over our social media feeds – and while we’re not going to begrudge anyone their happiness, we don’t always feel so magnanimous when our own house is a mess, out hair is like a bird’s nest and the kids are screaming blue murder at each other.
So we LOVE photographer Natasha Kelly’s images of real family life. And you know what? We reckon they’re even more beautiful than any ‘perfect’ posed photos.
Natasha documents the wonderful and the mundane on her blog Sham of the Perfect – sharing all the parts of life that add up to make us the family we really are, not just a sanitised, pretty-to-look-at version.
“I was looking at photos of families and seeing that everything was clean and tidy and neat all the time and I just struggled, says Natasha. “I thought, ‘My photos don’t look like that; I can’t get it together enough to get my kids in matching outfits and have everything running smoothly all the time.
“The reality is that what we do every day is enough and I think it’s worth people having these photos. Because these are the photos, we remember. It’s not the posed photos that everyone draws their memories from. It’s the photos of your brother and sister running around, harassing you, or your mum and dad having a cuddle in the kitchen – those moments that just happen.”
Now Natasha is calling on other parents to share their “perfectly imperfect” photos, posting them on her Sham of the Perfect Instagram page.
And we have to say, they're making us feel a hell of a lot better!
So listen up mummas, next time you look at a Facebook page with seemingly perfect family photos, remember that how you spend your days is how you spend your life – and that's what's precious, and real.
Have you any perfectly imperfect snaps of your own? We’d love to see them!
