Do You Wanna Take My Picture, Because I Won't Remember

When a studio portrait just isn't good enough

Doting parents hire personal photographers to capture the moment

Shannon Stauffer can easily take snapshots or get retail studio portraits of her children. But instead, the Harrisburg, Pa., mother paid $1,000 to hire a professional photographer to catch them in action, all year. Photographer Hollis Healy spent several hours following Kaelyn, 4, and Mason, 2 - playing, at Easter, on their birthdays, in the park and in the case of Kaelyn, at ballet class. Stauffer said she didn’t want portraits with a fake backdrop in a studio. 'Hollis captures their true expressions, their natural happy expressions,' she said.

Professional photographers, hoping to stand out in a crowded market and build loyal clients and more referrals, are pushing year-long contracts and day-in-the-life shoots that capture people inside the hospital's labor and delivery room, on vacation, at soccer games and even at the office and the classroom.

Some of those long-term packages also include studio shots, such as black-and-white photos that document a woman's pregnancy or an infant's growth. 'It reminds me of the royal family on a very small scale. They have their own personal photographer,' said Jessie Kimmel, whose Canadian studio, This Moment Now Photographic, started offering first-year-of-life photo sessions this fall for about $500 to $1,000, including one 8x10 print and a set of digital "negatives."

She's on-call with a pager for parents who want her to photograph the birth of their babies. Consumers increasingly want relaxed, more natural portraits, and the kinds of shots seen in fashion magazines and art galleries, said Skip Cohen, president of Wedding and Portrait Photographers International, an association with 6,000 members. Photographers are catering to that demand and trying to turn wedding clients into lifelong customers who will go on to buy photos for their families.