Children: "Now they can grow up"

     How important is it to capture children in a way that when you look at the portrait you can say. "Now they can grow up"? I never realized what a children's photographer really did until I heard those words in my studio. With a tone of relief, the children's grandmother said, as she viewed their portraits for the very first time, "Now, they can grow up". I sat back in my chair and thought, Wow! My goal from that day on was to create children's portraits that make you feel that it's now, okay to let your children grow up, because their childhood and innocence has been preserved forever.