I've loved taking photographs since my school days, but it was while my family was living in the United States that I picked up a DSLR camera for the very first time. "I want to capture, in photographs, the way my two sons are growing up surrounded by nature" — that feeling grew stronger and stronger, until I bought a camera and threw myself into photography.
Back then, the dominant photography style was traditional posed portraiture — everyone lined up neatly, everyone looking perfectly at the camera. I admired that style too, and studied how to pose a family, trying it out on my own sons. But my boys, then three and two years old and bursting with energy, wouldn't move the way I wanted. There I was, trying to control my children to get the "ideal" photo, while they ran off freely in every direction. I still remember how disappointed I felt every time I pressed the shutter.
That uneasy feeling continued for years, until one day it suddenly struck me: "Let's stop trying to force the kids into a mold." Looking back through the years of photos I'd taken of my sons moving freely and naturally, all the emotions I'd felt as a mother, living through those moments alongside them, came rushing back. In those photos, my sons wore the exact same expressions I saw every single day. Even as a young mother struggling through the chaos of parenting, those photographs reminded me just how deeply I loved my sons.
It was around the time I began wanting to preserve my family's natural, unguarded moments that I discovered lifestyle photography — a style of shooting that captures a family's true self and connection, exactly as it appears in the flow of daily life. It lets me record, just as they are, the beauty of time spent with the people you love, and the family bonds that live inside the smallest, most unremarkable moments.
I was also struck all over again by the beauty of "everyday photography" — documenting daily life in a documentary style throughout the years of raising children. The photos from my decade-plus of parenting are, quite simply, our family's own everyday photography. Looking back on them years later, I realized that all those days I thought had rushed by in an instant were, in fact, proof of how carefully our family had been living, together.
A cluttered room. The familiar view of our neighborhood. A simple dinner thrown together in the rush of parenting — and yet, my sons eating it with the biggest smiles on their faces. That's when I realized: it's exactly the days we think of as "ordinary" that are packed full of shining treasures.
"Now that I'm a mother of five, one thought stays with me every time I look back through the photos I've taken: every moment spent with the people we love is a treasure. If I can help even a little in preserving your own precious treasures in the form of a photograph, I would be truly happy."
— Sayaka Okubo
Born in Okinawa, raised in Kyushu. Lived in the United States while attending junior college, and again during her husband's graduate studies abroad. Picked up a camera for the first time while living in the U.S. Trained under professional photographer Ryoma Kitsuta. Mother of five energetic boys.