“When I was in fourth grade,” boutique photographer Jen Fox says, “I was a little chunky, I had inch-thick glasses, braces, and acne… Needless to say, I was a little picked on.”
Her parents wanted to help, but didn’t know how. Because they knew how much family portraits meant to Jen, they said that if she got to a certain weight, they’d take family photos. “I finally made it down to their perfect size when I was sixteen,” she remembers, “and we finally got a family portrait on the wall.”
That memory is complicated for her, but also formative. It planted in her a desire to help others, especially kids, see themselves as good enough, just how they are.
As she built her boutique photography business, Jen saw how powerful it is for kids to see themselves on the wall.
When a section of the Great Salt Lake turned pink, Jen immediately thought of her daughter’s obsession with mermaids. She remembers the moment she hung the mermaid transformation portrait on the wall. “Oh my gosh, she lost her mind. She was dancing and screaming, ‘That's me, Mommy!’”
Those reactions are everything to Jen. She wants kids to see themselves for who they are—not stiffly posed, but full of quirks and personality. “Those little moments… they’re gone so quickly! That’s why it's so important to capture them before they're gone and not have them just sit in our phones.”
The quirks and personality can come out in some delightfully funny ways. If the kid she’s photographing is a cowgirl-loving, baseball-playing kid, she says, “Let's go out to the baseball diamond in your cowgirl get-up and take pictures of you on the baseball diamond, because that's who you are." She says, “I want that little girl to have this cute little silly portrait up on her wall of her being her unique self.”
Jen says it's hard to overemphasize the importance of printing and hanging the photos. In fact, she works according to a guiding philosophy: “If it’s not printed, it never happened.”
Years ago, Jen booked a session with a photographer, resulting in over 400 digital images. It took her nine months to go through the images, then another three to actually print them. When they came in the mail, they sat on her kitchen table for six months until she bought frames and hung them up.
Jen ensures her clients don’t face that same problem.
“My goal is to get artwork on walls,” she says. She makes it happen by being there every step of the way.
A photo session with Jen starts with a phone call to assess if she and the client are a good fit. Then, Jen creates a mood board for the photo session and helps her clients pick outfits. After the photo session, she helps them narrow down what to print. “Then there’s the least amount of thought process on their part.” Finally, she has someone she works with to physically hang the artwork on her client’s wall, if that’s what they want. To her, that’s the most crucial part, because Jen believes that physically hanging family photos on the wall builds connection.
“I think the most important thing I want to get across is that we need to feel connected to the people we love. And one of the easiest ways to feel that connection is to walk into your home, walk past the wall to your kitchen, and see this image of the people you love.”
“When you walk into your home, I want you to be greeted by this gorgeous, custom-framed piece of artwork that makes you feel like your home is giving you a hug when you walk in the door.”
Hanging family photos helps your children see themselves how they really are, not how they may see themselves on the inside. To illustrate this, Jen tells a story of a few years back, when she went to a retreat where everyone had makeup artists and hairstylists prepare them for a professional photo session.
“The next day they brought us the envelopes with our images in them,” Jen says. “I literally almost threw it away because I was like, I don't even want to see it. I know it’s going to be hideous. It’s always hideous. And then I pulled the image out of the envelope and I just started crying because I was like, ‘Wow, that's me.’”
When she showed the photo to her husband, all he said was, “Yeah, that’s what you look like.” Now, Jen keeps that photo displayed where she can see it, a physical reminder of her philosophy that having a professional portrait of yourself on the wall is a way to learn to love yourself for who you are.
“It's powerful when you have those moments,” she says. “That's what I do it for.”
So, for Jen, photography isn’t about chasing perfection—it’s about reminding people that they’re already beautiful and worth celebrating.
“I don't believe that anyone is truly broken,” Jen says. “I think we might have some chips. We might have some glitter glue in places holding us together, but it's what makes us unique and worth celebrating. We all need to come to a place where we can love that about ourselves and see us the way that the people who love us see us.”
And the discovery of that self-love can begin with a good picture.
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Jen Fox is the owner of Jen Fox Photography, a boutique photography business that specializes in celebrating the unique quirks and personalities that make families so special.
Contact Jen on her website: https://www.jen-fox-photography.com/ or by phone: 801-831-8199.
Those little moments… they’re gone so quickly! That’s why it's so important to capture them before they're gone.