I could give you lots of good reasons why you should hire a professional photographer. And I have. Many, many times. There’s the obvious “they’re growing up so fast” argument. The “they’ll only be this little once” argument. The “you only get 18 summers” - just kidding, that’s a total bs argument and I actually argued against that trope recently. There’s also the obvious, but nobody-talks-about secret of “death comes for us all,” which nobody talks about because it’s so dang sad and might actually put you into an existential tailspin if you’re not in the right headspace.

But today, I’m arguing the other side: why you shouldn’t hire a professional photographer. Let’s get to it.

Reason 1: You can just DIY it and get the same result.

I’m a DIYer at heart. I hate relying on others or hiring someone when I know I could do it myself. If I had time. And had the tools. And knew how to use the tools. Usually I stare at a problem for months before I give up and decide not to do it. Sometimes, I buy a sewing machine with the stubbornness of someone who knows how to use a sewing machine, but leave it in a box for 10 years because I don’t actually know how to sew and don’t really have the time or interest to learn. But that’s just me. You can DIY it, with the tripod and the self-timer, and get mostly the same result, and it’s basically fine. You don’t need to hire a photographer.

Reason 2: You have no plans to print them.

You only want the photos so they’ll be available on your hard drive later on, and don’t see the benefit to printing photos and hanging them on your walls. Why would you bother with a photo on the wall or a printed album, when you can just have a folder on your computer in “My Downloads” and go look at that whenever you want? I mean, when was the last time you spent time perusing the folders on your computer with your kids? So you really shouldn’t bother spending all that money on a photographer if the photos are meant for hard drive use only.

Reason 3: You don’t plan to get into the photos yourself.

Along the DIY line, you can very easily get decent pictures of your kids on your own. If you’re not planning to also get into the photos, there’s no real reason to hire someone to take photos of your kids. Especially not “lifestyle” photos, where the kids are playing and interacting with each other. You can totally just do that yourself. Why would you pay someone for that? And why on earth would you want photos of yourself with your kids?

Reason 4: You don’t trust a photographer to get good photos of you and your family.

“Photos, at home, doing what we normally do? But I’m up to my elbows with work, and we don’t do anything “cute,” and my kids have way too much screen time and I definitely don’t want photos of that… all we do is crash on the couch.” (That’s you.) You believe there’s no possible way a professional could come into your disaster of a house and find a cute angle to photograph your family. No way you’ll be seen as the person you are, in that environment. There’s no way a trained artist with loads of experience might be able to come in and see what’s special about your love for each other. Why even bother hiring them?

Reason 5: You have a friend or family member who has a camera and kind of knows how to work it - and they won’t charge you for it.

This is the really hard one. You’ve seen your nephew with his camera, he gets relatively decent photos at the holidays and he tinkers with it for fun sometimes. He usually takes photos of food and landscapes, but he could totally take photos of your family, and all you need is one or two for the holiday card, anyway. He won’t charge you for it! (What should photography cost, anyway?) You can save all that money you were going to use for photos, and put it toward your new computer (don’t forget to transfer over your hard drive so you don’t lose those photos)!

Despite my heavy dose of sarcasm (which was really a lot of fun to write), it really was hard to stop myself from disproving every reason as I was writing it.

Maybe you see yourself in one or more of these, in which case you should ponder if pro photos are really right for you before you spend the time and effort and money on it. Or, if you’d like to dig deeper into that feeling and have some questions, feel free to jump into my inbox to explore how those reasons made you feel.

But if you found yourself arguing against my reasons or checking off “nope” for all of them, maybe you should move on to the next step of finding the best photographer for you. Maybe that photographer is me, or maybe it’s not. I’m happy to help you find the best person for you.