You never know what’s going to land in your inbox as a photographer. Wedding inquiries, print orders, spam from someone promising to make me “Instagram famous” for $9.99… and then there are the other messages.
The kind where someone politely asks you to take down a photo you took years ago because… well, it’s “embarrassing.”
This one came from a woman whose daughter had apparently stumbled across some images of her now-husband. I took them long before they were together — intimate portraits with a past partner, but nothing risqué that was shared publicly. No scandal, no shocking reveals, just a couple in a close, connected moment. Think “tender romance” more than “tabloid headline.”
But to her, it was an issue. Not because the photos were inappropriate (they weren’t), but because they existed online.
Here’s the thing: once a photographer shares work online — whether in a portfolio, a blog, or social media — those images take on a life of their own. Even if I deleted them from my account today, they’ve likely been cached, pinned, re-shared, maybe even downloaded and tucked away in some stranger’s inspiration folder back in 2016. The internet is not a tidy attic you can sweep clean.
And honestly? I had no intention of removing them anyway — they’re part of my body of work and part of the story of my career. If I pulled every image because someone’s spouse or sibling or “friend from church” found it awkward, I’d have more empty gallery space than a mall food court on a Tuesday morning.
I get it though — seeing a piece of someone’s romantic past pop up unexpectedly can feel… weird. But photographers live in that reality every day. We know that once a moment is captured and shared, it becomes part of a bigger story — ours, our subjects’, and sometimes… a random family member years later.
So the moral? If you pose for intimate photos, even the tasteful, artful kind, understand they might live on longer than the relationship that inspired them. And if one surfaces years later? Maybe smile, appreciate where life has taken you since, and remember:
The internet never forgets — and neither do photographers.
