The Inner Snapshot: The Portrait Your Camera Can’t Take
Have you ever pulled out your child’s school photos and held them side by side, trying to figure out which year was which? You forgot to write the date on the back, and now you’re squinting at the pictures thinking, “Was this third grade or fourth?”
The braces help narrow it down. Maybe the haircut gives you a clue. But honestly? Without really stopping to think about what was happening in their life at the time, they all start to blur together.
You’ve got a perfect record of what they looked like each year. But you’ve completely lost track of who they were.
We’ve gotten incredibly good at capturing appearances, and terrible at capturing meaning.
That’s where the Inner Snapshot comes in.
Beyond the Outer Snapshot
We bought into Kodak’s old promise that all we have to do is hit the shutter and the photo does the rest. But that’s rubbish. Photos are just placeholders for the moments we hold dear.
The meaning isn’t in the pixels—it’s in us. And if we don’t preserve it, it fades.
The Inner Snapshot is the opposite of the outer snapshot your camera takes. It’s not about what someone looks like right now. It’s about who they are right now. Not just a split second, but a swath of time—maybe a school year, maybe a season, maybe just a month.
Because who we are today won’t be who we are six months from now. Things change. We change. And when we try to look back later, our memory isn’t reliable—it bends and reshapes itself to match who we are now, not who we were then.
The Time-Travel Assignment
Imagine you see this ad: “Travel back in time to report on your past self—one-time offer.”
Your mission? File a complete intelligence report on who you were at this exact moment in your life.
What consumes your thoughts when your mind wanders?
What three things are you most worried about right now?
What makes you feel proud of yourself these days?
What do you believe about money, success, relationships?
What would you do if no one was watching?
What brings you genuine joy, not just distraction?
What are you secretly hoping will happen?
What kind of person are you trying to become?
What do you know now that you didn’t know then?
And here’s the bonus: while you’re there, what one piece of advice would your future self whisper in your ear?
That’s the Inner Snapshot. It’s filing that intelligence report—on yourself, your child, your family—before time changes who you are and makes it impossible to remember.
The Word Farm
As a photographer for 30 years, I’ve taken thousands of portraits that show exactly what students looked like. But I realized those images don’t preserve who they were in that moment.
That’s why I developed the Inner Snapshot system. At its heart is something I call the Word Farm—a visual collection of words that describe who someone is right now. Not forever. Not permanent traits. Just the current mix of “I AM,” “I LOVE,” “I WANT,” and “I DO” that defines this season of their life.
Just like a photo is composed of pixels, a profile can start to take shape by gathering the right words. Filling in the blank, just sitting with the words “I WANT __________,” can create just enough tension to produce a word that distills what you’re feeling. One word can often be more powerful than paragraphs of words.
When you combine the Word Farm with thoughtful prompts about values, challenges, dreams, and growth, you create a time capsule parents can look back on and instantly recognize not just the face, but the person their child was that year.
What It Looks Like
The Inner Snapshot works alongside any photo—a school picture, team photo, family snapshot, even a selfie.
It’s designed as a living document that combines what you look like with who you are in a season of life:
- September: Your child fills out their goals, challenges, and Word Farm at the start of the school year.
- December: New interests emerge, priorities shift, different words appear in the Word Farm.
- March: Proud moments get added, challenges evolve, the Word Farm grows.
- June: Looking back at September’s answers, they can see exactly how they’ve changed.
It’s not meant to be filled out once and forgotten. It lives somewhere visible—on the fridge, a bedroom wall, or a desk—where they can add to it as things happen.
Why This Matters
Just like you take a photo when you know a moment is about to pass, you take an Inner Snapshot when you know change is coming.
For a high school athlete, that change happens fast. The player who walks into pre-season practice in August won’t be the same one who walks off the field in November. The freshman you photograph in the fall won’t be the same person by graduation.
Most of those changes go completely undocumented. We keep the photo of what they looked like, but lose the details of who they were.
We save the pixels, but not the details that make up their story.
Without the Inner Snapshot, the images pile up and the years blur together. Was she obsessed with marine biology in sixth grade or seventh? When did he stop wanting to be a firefighter? What was their biggest fear that year? What words would have filled the Word Farm?
The photo shows you their face. The Inner Snapshot brings back their voice.
But Can’t I Just Remember?
“I’ll remember,” we tell ourselves. “This phase is unforgettable. How could I forget?”
But memory doesn’t work that way. It gets rewritten every time we access it. Without the snapshot, we remember who they were through the lens of who they are now. We project backwards. We fill in gaps with today’s knowledge. We override what was there with what is now.
The Inner Snapshot captures what memory can’t preserve: the exact configuration of who your child is right now, before time changes them into someone new.
A good story shows change, transformation and growth, but without a before photo, without benchmarking what is now, we’ll have nothing solid to compare to then.
Start Your Family’s First Inner Snapshot
Instead of letting this year’s school photo stack onto the pile, start capturing who your child is right now.
I’ve created a free Inner Snapshot template with the Word Farm concept, the prompts I’ve developed, and simple instructions for turning it into a living document your family will treasure.
How to use it:
- Print the template on cardstock
- Add any photo—school picture, team photo, family snapshot, or selfie
- Keep it somewhere visible throughout the year
- Let it evolve as your child grows and changes
The Complete Picture
A photo of your child at age ten is good.
A record of their Word Farm, dreams, fears, and growth at age ten is good.
Put them together, and you have something irreplaceable.
Years from now, you won’t be squinting at photos wondering, “When was this taken?” You’ll have a complete snapshot—inside and out—of exactly who your child was in that moment.
One captures what they looked like.
The other captures who they were.
Together, they preserve the whole person.
