Every family needs a great portrait to remember the years gone by, especially when the kid are young. This year we went out to a park in Paso Robles with Josh’s sister to take our photos. It was freezing and poor Caleb cried the whole time, but we were still able to take some amazing family portraits. Josh’s sister is not a photographer, but I helped pose us and guide her through taking the photos. With just a little guidance and some retouching the photos came out great.
Let me know if you want to learn how to take great portraits of your family. I’ll be teaching classes starting in 2013.
How cute is this kid? This was a family portrait session and 1 year old baby portrait session combined. We started with the family portraits on the bridge and then moved to the stream in the park. I love photographing by the stream because it is so green, even on the tree trunks, plus there are a lot of duckies for the kids to look at. I love the contrast between the green trees and grass and the pink of here outfit.
Paige Aurora is my precious little lady bug. She is my best friends new baby girl and sooo cute! Her whole room is decorated in lady bugs and she even has a lady bug Halloween costume from this year. I thought it would be perfect to photograph her in her room with the lady bugs. At the end of the session we were able to photograph her in her lady bug outfit too. The lady bug outfit picture is my favorite!!! I think the photographs are going to match her room really well. She is four days old and fresh from the hospital in these images.
The Gordon family was so much fun to work with! They have a darling little daughter named Bella who, luckily, was excited for the photography session. Bella almost made it through the whole shoot too, of course with the help of one of her toys. To make her laugh Josh would put one of her toys on his head and let it fall off. Her parents suggested this and it worked like a charm.
When I met with the couple prior to the shoot, they told me that they were concerned about going on location and would like to take the portraits in their home. So we set up a great little studio area in their living room, pulling in a couch and bench that were already in their home.
It’s really great to be able to photograph in the home. It gives me the opportunity to help with wardrobe for each person and to use props that they are emotional attached to in the photographs. It also gives me the chance to see the space where the finished artwork will go so I can help them choose what sizes and images would work best.
We tried to stay consistent in each set of portraits, while still giving some variety. We took a few different types of casual group portraits on the couch before switching to the more formal portraits. We also made sure to get some of the lifestyle portraits of them in the home, Bella playing, and the parents embracing each other and dancing with love. Hopefully these will create a good mix of images for their walls.
I shot Audra’s maternity portraits a few months ago and was recently able to photograph baby Raelee for the first time. This slideshow includes all of the portraits from the recent baby portrait photography session, as well as a few of my favorites from the maternity session. I wanted to make sure I captured some of Tyler too so they could have matching portraits. We tried to get some of both kids, but as you can see Raelee was not having it.
I love these kids!! I’m sure ya’ll will see plenty more pictures of these two in the years to come.
How cute is this kid? (The answer is soooo cute!) We took Fischer and his mother out to a regional park in Irvine, CA that is so beautiful. We played with Fischer and let him walk/crawl around while we captured his expressions. I had this brilliant idea to create a fall atmosphere where the giant leaves fell around him. Josh and I went out to our friend’s house early on the morning of the photo shoot to collect giant leaves. When we got there the family was just waking up. When they let their dog out he jumped up on Josh’s leg to say hello and ended up peeing all over him. I’m not talking about a little bit of pee when the dog gets excited. This was a full morning puppy pee. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that the clients never see.
Okay, so this idea of mine ended up being a bit of a disaster. I admit it wasn’t that brilliant. In half the images I took the leaves covered Fischer’s face. In the other half of the images he was watching them fall or chasing after them. This image here is the best one we got. I still think it is a cute idea and I do want to try it again.
In this image Fischer had began to cry and his mother came to the rescue. Just after she picked him up the tears faded away and I captured this adorable image. It reminds me of images of my dad back in the 60′s when he was a baby. Timeless images are the best!
This one here was taken toward the end of the shoot. At this point he was getting tired and we had already brought out the snacks. Now it was time for the bubbles. Bubbles are awesome! Most kids completely forget that they are upset or tired as soon as they see bubbles. The key here is to wait until you really need them to bring them out, otherwise you risk having the child get bored.
