Why Every Dad Should Have a Portrait of His Own, Not Just Photos With the Kids

Victor Ravell
5 hours ago
3 min read

Most fathers I photograph start with the same line: "we have thousands of photos at home, but I am in almost none of them." And they are usually right. They take the pictures of the first day of school, the holidays, the lazy Sunday breakfast, and they disappear from the frame themselves.

A men's photo session for a dad has nothing to do with vanity. It is about existing in your own pictures years from now, instead of only ever standing behind the camera.

Men's portrait of a father during a photo session in Krakow, Victor Ravell

You are always the one holding the camera

In most families there is one person who documents everything. They set up the shot, line everyone up, make sure the kids are looking at the lens. Very often that person is the dad. The result is a hard drive full of photos of your children and almost no good photo of yourself from those same years.

This is not about one perfect shot for a frame. It is that in ten or twenty years your kids will want to see what you looked like now. Who you were while they were small. A phone will not save that, because on the phone you are barely there.

A portrait that stays in the family

Your own portrait is not a luxury or an ego thing. It is a record. A men's portrait where you are present and recognisable stays in the family far longer than hundreds of random phone snaps. It is the photo your children will one day put on a shelf, not the one that vanishes into the cloud among a thousand others.

There is a simpler, practical reason too. A good portrait earns its keep in several places at once: LinkedIn, your company page, a new role at work. If you are going to stand in front of a camera at some point anyway, do it once, properly.

"I will do it later" usually means never

A lot of fathers put their own photos off until some other time. I will book a session once I lose the weight. Once I have more time. Once the kids are a bit older. I know these lines well, because I hear them at almost every meeting.

The trouble is that "later" rarely arrives, and children grow up faster than you expect. You do not have to wait for the perfect moment or the perfect shape. A good portrait shows you as you are now, and that is exactly where its value sits.

What the session looks like when you dislike being photographed

Nearly every dad tells me the same thing at the start: "I do not know how to pose, I do not like having my photo taken." That is the most normal thing in the world, and you do not need to fix it. That is my job. I guide you step by step: I tell you where to stand, what to do with your hands, where to look. You do not have to perform.

We work in the studio or outdoors, whichever suits you better. If you would like, we can take part of the session with your kids, because those frames matter too. I insist on only one thing: that at least a few shots are yours alone.

That is how I approach a men's photo session in Krakow: calm, no pressure, with a portrait that genuinely looks like you on a good day.