There's a photograph somewhere in your family — maybe in a box, maybe on a wall, maybe buried in someone's phone — that stops you cold every time you see it.

Maybe it's your kids at an age they barely remember being. Maybe it's your parents when they were younger than you are now. Maybe it's a version of your family that no longer exists in quite the same way — before someone moved, before someone was lost, before everyone got older.

You look at that photo and you feel something specific. Not just nostalgia. Something closer to gratitude. Gratitude that someone, at some point, stopped and said: let's document this. Right now. The way we are today.

That's what a family portrait tradition does. Not once. Every year.

Why Most Families Have One Portrait — and Nothing After

I hear a version of the same story regularly. A family had portraits done for a specific occasion — a baby's first year, a milestone birthday, a holiday card that one year. The photos came out beautifully. Everyone loved them.

And then life got busy. The kids grew. Another year passed, and then another. And now it's been five years, or eight years, or longer, and the most recent professional portrait in the house is from a season that feels like a different life.

The reasons families stop are almost always the same:

• It feels like a production — coordinating outfits, finding a date, getting everyone out the door.

• It's hard to know when the "right time" is, so every year gets pushed to next year.

• It feels indulgent, or unnecessary, or like something you'll get to when things settle down.

I understand all of those reasons. And I'd gently push back on all of them — because the families who have done annual portraits for five, ten, fifteen years will tell you the same thing: the logistical friction is real, and it doesn't matter at all once you're sitting with a gallery that shows your family changing year by year.

The production gets easier when it becomes a habit. The "right time" is always now. And things never fully settle down — which is exactly why you don't want to wait for them to.

The Difference Between a Portrait and a Tradition

A single portrait is a beautiful thing. A tradition is something different entirely.

When you commit to portraits annually — or even every other year — you start building something that has no real equivalent in any other format. Not video, not phone photos, not social media. A series of professional portraits of your family, taken at consistent intervals over years, becomes a living document of who you are together.

You see it most clearly when you look at them side by side.

The kids who were barely walking are now taller than one parent. The family that was three is now four, or five. The dog who was in every early photo is no longer there, and a new one has appeared. The parents — you — look different. Not worse. Just different. Marked by time in the way that all meaningful lives are.

There's a particular kind of family I work with who has been doing this for years — sometimes before they even had kids, starting as a couple, adding children as they arrived, continuing as the kids got older and more opinionated about participating. When I talk to those parents about their portrait archive, they don't describe it as a collection of photos. They describe it as a record of their family's life. Something they plan to pass down.

That's what a tradition makes possible. A single session can't do that. Time can.

How to Actually Start

The most common thing I hear from families who want to start a portrait tradition is some version of: "We keep meaning to, but we're never quite ready."

Here's what I've learned after years of this work: ready is a feeling that arrives after you book, not before.

Starting is simpler than it feels. A few things that help:

Pick a season and anchor to it. Annual portraits work best when they happen around the same time every year — not because it matters photographically, but because it becomes a marker. Fall is the most popular for a reason: the light in Reno is beautiful, the heat has broken, and it lands naturally before the holidays. But spring works beautifully too, especially if you want the energy of new growth and longer days. What matters less is the season and more that you pick one and keep it.

Don't wait for a reason. The families with the richest portrait archives didn't always have a specific occasion in mind. They just decided that their family, as it was right now, was reason enough. That framing shift — from "we'll do it when something big happens" to "we are the something big" — changes everything.

Let go of the perfect coordination. Outfits don't need to match. Hair doesn't need to be perfect. Kids don't need to cooperate perfectly. The photos where everyone is slightly imperfect and completely real are almost always the ones that end up meaning the most.

Keep it low-pressure. The sessions that produce the best images are the ones where the family shows up as themselves — not performing for the camera, but actually being together. My job is to create the conditions for that. Your job is to show up.

What Family Portraits in Reno Look Like

Reno is genuinely one of the better places I can imagine for outdoor portrait work, and I say that without any hometown bias — or at least not much.

The geography gives us range. Within twenty minutes of downtown you have the Truckee River, Wingfield Park, the Galena Creek corridor, the wide open light of the valleys, and the foothills that frame the city. Each location has its own character and suits different families differently. A family that spends weekends hiking has a different portrait than a family that gravitates toward urban settings — and both of those are available here.

The light is something specific to the high desert. It's clear and directional in a way that coastal light isn't, and in the golden hours of morning and late afternoon it does things that are genuinely hard to replicate anywhere else. If you've ever seen a portrait taken in Reno at the right hour and wondered why it looked the way it did, that's why.

We also have seasons that actually change — not dramatically, but meaningfully. Spring green, summer warmth, fall color in the foothills, the occasional golden-brown of the Nevada high desert in October. Each season produces a portrait that looks like that season. Over years, that variety becomes part of the archive.

Making It Stick Year After Year

The families who sustain a portrait tradition over many years tend to have a few things in common.

They treat it like any other non-negotiable annual event — the same way they'd approach a yearly checkup or a family vacation. Not something to be scheduled when everything else clears, but something that gets scheduled first and protected.

They don't overthink it. Outfits get simpler over the years, not more complicated. The approach to the session relaxes. The kids get used to it and often start to look forward to it. What feels like a production the first year feels like a familiar rhythm by the third.

And they print the photos. This might be the most important thing I can tell you. Digital galleries are beautiful and convenient, but they don't go on walls. They don't get passed around at Thanksgiving. They don't get found in a box twenty years later. A print — even one framed print per year — is what makes the tradition visible and real in your home. It's what your kids grow up seeing on the wall and understanding, without anyone having to explain it, that their family's story is worth documenting.

The Portrait You'll Wish You'd Taken

I've been doing this work long enough to have heard, more than once, some version of a story that I think about often.

A parent — sometimes a grandparent — looks at an old family photo and says: I can't believe we almost didn't take that one. We were running late. The kids were fighting. We didn't think we looked right. But someone insisted, and we did it anyway, and now it's the only photo I have of all of us together from that year.

The photos you almost don't take are often the ones that matter the most. Because the years they represent don't come back.

Your family, right now, at this exact point in time — this configuration of ages and heights and faces and dynamics — exists for a very specific and limited window. It's already changing. A year from now it will be different in ways you can feel but can't fully articulate yet.

That's not something to be anxious about. It's something to document.

Start this year. Start the tradition. Let it build into something your family will look back on for the rest of their lives.

Darrell Clark Photography serves families, portrait clients, headshots, and personal branding in Reno and the surrounding area. Family portrait sessions are one of my favorite things I do — reach out to talk about booking your session, choosing a location, or just figuring out where to start.

The Milestone Series  |  The Milestone Series One Page Guide

🎤  Want the audio take? The Frame by Frame Podcast episode "The Annual Portrait" covers why the families with the richest photo archives all have one thing in common — and how to build that for your own family. Find it on Spotify or wherever you listen.