Celebrating 5 Moments that Changed Us

Today, we’re recapping our 5 Moments in 5 Days anniversary celebration. It was hard for us to pick only five moments, because all of the moments we have created, documented and celebrated over the last five years have filled us with joy.

Each of the examples that we chose focuses on our mission of documenting the every day moments that matter to families. They demonstrate how we make and honor history, milestones, legacy and new beginnings every day,. This is exactly what families do, no matter their shape, size, or circumstances. We hope that you enjoy reliving these moments as much as we do, and we are grateful that you continue to share and celebrate your moments with us.

When the Little Moments Add up to the Story of Childhood for Two Siblings

We love working with families like this one year after year. This family hired us to create their first video the year Portraits that Move launched, and we have been documenting their lives ever since. What a wonderful way to preserve the moments that make up a family’s history, as those moments unfold.

Here's a look at the first film we created for them

And here is the most recent film..


Much gratitude to this family who keeps us smiling year after year!

Bringing Together Years of Small Moments for one Big Mitzvah Montage

All of these moments make up the stories of our lives. Mitzvahs provide the perfect opportunity to celebrate that life as it is growing and changing.

In this Mitzvah Montage, we take time to look back on these moments, to celebrate them, and to share them with friends and family who come together to support and honor a child during a milestone moment.

Capturing 3 Generations in One Film

What an amazing opportunity it was to create a film that brought the lives of three generations of one family together in celebration and joy.


As filmmakers, when you work with multiple generations of the same family, you are able to see the large and small ways that each individual’s experiences, observations, and personalities come together to create a complete, rich story of a family.

From the great grandparent down to the newest family member, we are able to see how history, tradition and love come together to create a story that is entirely unique to them, and that, at the same time, resonates with us all.

Meeting Baby, Meeting the World

From the eldest generations to the newest, we delight in bringing moments to life on film. Our Baby Videos are precious, especially when we are able to captured firsts - like baby’s first time touching snow - on video. So much more than a set of infant or baby photos, these moving portraits give us the sights and sounds of a baby. And they allow parents to talk about what it is like in those first few months in an honest, open, and joyful way.


It is often said because it is so true, time moves more quickly than we can imagine. And as much as we are convinced we will remember every detail of our baby’s first months and years, we don’t. They are gone in a flash, and it is so gratifying to have something to look back on to remember exactly how it looked, how it felt, what it sounded like when there was a new baby in your home.

Celebrating Healing

One of the most profoundly gratifying and joyful experiences we have is creating videos for our Portraits that Heal project. In these videos, we honor and celebrate the lives of children who live with chronic, life threatening illnesses.


In addition to demonstrating the resiliency, tenacity, and hope that these children and their families embody every day, our Portraits that Heal videos also remind us, and those who watch them, about the beauty, simplicity and joy of living every day. We are inspired and amazed by these children and we are deeply honored to be able to preserve their lives and their words on film..

Share Your Joy with Us

Contact Portraits that Move to book a video celebrating your family’s daily life, and the history you are making.

Love and Thanks for Sharing a Beautiful Year with Us

Dear Friends,

2016 has been such a wonderful year for us. We were thrilled to release new kinds of videos from Portraits that Move including our Generations Video, the Portraits that Move Baby Video and our brand new gift card (perfect for your last minute holiday gifts!).

We worked with several families for the third year in a row and wrote many blog posts - including some for A Child Grows in Brooklyn.

We were also lucky enough to be featured in Forbes, Working Mother Magazine, the Women Killing It podcast, and NPR's Only Human.

Most of all, though, we were so blessed to have spent time with you and your families. We love all of our time with you and can’t believe our good fortune of getting to do this work. It is deeply fulfilling to share a moment in time with you, to get to know your children and to share in their brilliance. Thank you so much for trusting us, for believing in what we do and for sharing our work with your friends and family.

I want to wish you and yours a happy and healthy holiday season. May it be one that is filled with magic, joy, shimmer and hope.

We look forward to sharing some new things with you in 2017.

Until then, thank you, thank you!

With deep love and gratitude,

Susannah and the Portraits That Move Team

The Small Moments are Powerful - Get to Know the Portraits that Move Baby Video

A few weeks ago when we announced that the Portraits that Move team added documentary style baby videos to our family video products, we were thrilled to see the excitement from families and were energized by your enthusiasm for our work.

Since launching our baby video product we have met wonderful families and been able to experience the beauty and the joy that come with adding a new person to the world.  And that was certainly the case in the baby video we created for Ramona and her family. 

 

We loved watching the pure joy of Ramona exploring her world around her.  It is incredible to capture her parents talking about Baby Ramona and discussing their hopes and dreams for her.  When we create baby videos, we are so aware of how much babies change and how much it means to document this moment, the core vision of our company in action.

With infants, the small moments are powerful - watching them walk, eat, smile, explore.  As filmmakers, creating baby videos brings us back to our basic gratitude for what we can do and also how amazing life is.

We invite you to take in this moment with us.  Enjoy the video of Ramona as she explores her world.  For me, nothing compares to the moment she is exploring the snow.  What a gift to be reminded of this simple pleasure, of its newness and of the hopeful anticipation that surrounds it - and her.

A Baby Announcement!

Things are going well here at Portraits that Move and so much of that is because of all of you who have shared your joy and family moments with us.  Every day, we get to experience the beauty of families growing, celebrating, changing and connecting with each other.

In these two years of speaking with parents and children as they grow and change, what has become clear to me is how fast time goes. I feel it intensely and with urgency.  In creating films of older children I became aware that the phase of life in which the passing of time feels most rapid - the most difficult to pause and to cherish - is babyhood. 

 

With this in mind, we are thrilled to announce that we are now creating videos of babies!  Check out our first video of the sweet baby Luca above. 

We are excited by the challenge of creating mini documentary style videos of infants, babies and toddlers. We want to give parents a time capsule experience that complements the still photographs they are already getting in order to capture all of the special moments of having an infant. 

Documenting baby's sounds and sights, parents' first impressions and stories of the early days of parenthood with your baby on video allows you to follow the advice that seems all too hard to apply when you're in the trenches - stop and enjoy the moments, the days are long but the years are short, you'll be amazed by how much you forget when it all feels like it's going so fast.

Learn more about creating a baby video with Portraits that Move.