H family :: 2011

This family session was oh, so fun!  

I loved the vision we had for it and how all of the details just fell into place at the last minute.  

It was so meant to be.

A mighty big thank you is due to those that helped us fit it all together!  

(I'll keep your names anonymous so you're not bombarded with requests like ours- wink, wink.)

Sweet babe.  He is the little bit bigger version of this little peanut.

This shot was an interesting one.  It had been clear and sunny until a couple hours before our session started.  Seconds before we got started the sun peeked out from behind some thunder clouds, but quickly hid itself again.  A little while into our session the grass started glowing like this and I was having a giant debate in my head.  The sun was still a little too high for what I wanted to accomplish, but this break in the clouds was going to be brief... I just knew it.

So we hustled to get it all just right and the bright light coming off of the grass made it nearly impossible to clearly see behind the lens what I was capturing.  Then all of a sudden, a gray cloud above us decided it had waited long enough and giant rain drops started falling all around us...

...so we jumped in the truck!  We played around there for a while, but the rain really started coming down and it was showing up in many of the photos (that's what that streak is in the top left corner of this photo).  So Camie, the best helper ever, corralled the children into the clean, dry car until the rain stopped.

I made Mom & Dad stay in the truck for a while while I shot holding an umbrella over myself.  

(For the first time I felt like I really deserved two assistants and chuckled at the thought of being so high maintenance.)

I love the shots of just the two of them in the truck.

The clouds mostly let up and we hurried the little ones back out before the sun went all the way down.  

It was very "thoughtful" of that rain cloud to interfere until the sun was just about down.

Cassadee had this great idea for their shoot to include story time for the boys.  They LOVE reading books and it was a great way to distract them from getting their pictures taken (every little boy hates getting his picture taken) and to capture what life is really all about for them right now.

I loved the whole series I shot of big brother and Daddy together.

And little brother was being such a charmer the whole time.

One last attempt at getting them all to smile and then we were done!

I want to share a couple things I thought as I walked away from this session.  First, for a family session with kids, bringing a familiar face to assist with delivering tiny pieces of candy and getting some genuine smiles is priceless.  These boys are my nephews, so I'm no stranger to them, but holding a camera in front of my face got them to kind of forget that we were having fun out there too.  So BRING A HELPER.  It also came in really handy to have her there to watch the kiddos while we shot some images of just mom and dad.  Which is also super important!  Second, you can't be over prepared.  We had a tarp to put under the blanket they sat on (for story time) since the ground was just a tiny bit moist from the week's earlier rain storms.  And that tarp saved our bacon when the clouds unleashed on us.  We just threw it over the chairs and books instead of wasting time carting it all back through the field and back to the cars.  It also was very wise of me to throw an umbrella in my car since there was a slight chance of thunderstorms that evening.  Had I not had that, I'm afraid our session would have been cut extremely short because it was really coming down there for a bit.  And third, I know family portraits can be super stressful, but if Mom can fake it that she's having a good time and just wants to enjoy some time with her family the rest of the group will follow suit.  I thought Cassadee did a great job of this and it really helped.

Thanks for the fun photo shoot, H family.  I really enjoyed myself and love what we captured.