Fall Family Photos near Boston: Capturing What Never Changes

October 2025 was magnificent, according to this photographer and exactly zero news outlets.

When the weather is crummy, that’s all anyone wants to talk about. But a perfect October in Boston? Crickets.

The weather didn’t just cooperate, it acted like a friend that had access to my Google Calendar. Only one session out of 20 had to be postponed due to rain. It was generally warm, not too windy, and there were even a few sunsets that were gorgeous enough to make a teenager look up from their phone.

And good lord…the leaves.

🍁 When Leaves Become Traffic Hazards

As usual, native maples stole the show. Sugar maples started super early and had me thinking they might drop before anything else turned, then they were like “lol psych” and exploded into traffic cone orange with a crimson twist and gold highlights. Red maples were off the hook, too—they looked like pomegranate juice on one side and silvery tuna sashimi on the other.

But the hickories and birches seemed like they were sick of the maples getting all the attention. There was a hickory on the edge of our big field that looked like someone had just used a giant highlighter on it, like it was borderline hazardous driving past it because I kept taking my eyes off the road. And the birches turned a shade of burnt sienna that could make Hexxus join Greenpeace (that’s a Fern Gully reference, btw.)

Not only was the weather amazing and the foliage spectacular, I was booked solid the whole month, thanks to beautiful people like you. Families, seniors, events, and headshots filled every spare moment, but none of it felt like work because literally everyone was a delight to work with. The term “dream job” gets thrown around a lot but I don’t think it’s hyperbole to apply it to my situation.

The Problem With Perfect Moments

And yet…today I found myself staring out the window like this, basically crying that the leaves are all blowing away:

As the November wind howls, there’s a little boy inside me saying, oh dear, please don’t go, you beautiful leaves. I’m not ready for winter. I just want to keep sipping pumpkin spice lattes that I hold with two hands and wear my favorite flannel for the rest of eternity.

This part of me, the change resister, wants to push pause on the inevitable. To somehow capture something that is, by its very nature, uncapturable.

I just finished a chapter in Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals called “You Can’t Hoard Life.” He talks about this exact impulse, how we experience something beautiful and immediately want to grasp onto it, to freeze it in place. And how that very act of grasping creates suffering, because it’s fundamentally impossible.

The moment is already passing. It’s passing as it’s happening.

If the leaves stayed this color all year and never fell off the trees, no one would give a crap about them. Things are beautiful precisely because they’re not permanent.

So then isn’t photography just a vain attempt to possess a moment in time?

This is the question I’ve been sitting with. If presence is what matters, if grasping creates suffering, why hire someone to take pictures of your family?

Here’s what I’ve come to understand.

What Family Photos Actually Capture

A family photo session isn’t going to be in your top 5 memories of all time. I don’t care how much fun it is. Obviously I try to make them enjoyable and stress-free, but I’m not deluding myself that I’m manufacturing some peak life experience for you.

That’s not the point.

The point is that you’re setting aside 90+ minutes where your only job is to be together. To play. To be exactly as you are. I’m not there to pose you or fabricate something. I’m there to create space for you to just exist with each other.

What I’m capturing isn’t a moment. It’s not something frozen or fixed or lost to time.

I’m capturing something that doesn’t change: the energy of your love for each other. Your spirit. The way you are when you’re just being yourselves.

That’s eternal. That’s what’s here right now, in this present moment. It doesn’t fade. It doesn’t belong to any one season or stage of life.

And so the photos on your wall aren’t about nostalgia. They’re not invitations to wish you could go back to when your kids were small or when life was simpler or whatever story we tell ourselves about the past.

They’re reminders of what’s true right now: that the love, goodness, and soul you see in those photos is always here with you, no matter how much has changed form.

🍂 Gratitude for the Passing Season

The windstorm took the leaves. The season has shifted. And it’s still beautiful, just in a different way.

I can’t hold onto fall. But as I go through these beautiful October sessions, I can feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude that I get to do something I truly love for a living.

I have a few weekend spots left in November if you’re feeling called to create some space for presence with your people. Just reach out and we’ll find a time.