Summer family portraits

Summer time is an excellent opportunity to spend extra time with your loved ones. It certainly feels like summer here in Austin with so many 100 degree days in a row!  Fortunately, when I photographed this adorable family in Santa Fe it was an incredibly gorgeous day... a perfect day for family portraits. I received a call from Anna, a professional portrait photographer located in Flagstaff, Arizona, who would be visiting Santa Fe with her family and she was inquiring about my capturing her family's portrait while they were in town. Of course I was very excited and extremely flattered by this request as Anna is an amazing photographer in her own right. But we photographers need portraits too! (That tripod thing gets a little old after a while!)

Anna and I talked about her family—her husband and their two children. Anna explained to me that her family was very casual and that she would love for the portraits to convey that energy. During our brain storming about the session we thought that bubbles would be visually interesting to incorporate into the images and would also provide a fun activity for the children. Since Anna's family was visiting from out of town it was not possible for me to photograph them at their home. This worked just fine, but it took a little more planning in terms of finding the best locations. I wanted the locations to have beautiful light, aesthetically pleasing surroundings and to offer a comfortable place for the family to interact with one another. We spent the first part of the session on the grounds of their hotel which I had scouted days earlier. I found a big tree that seemed welcoming and I felt like the grassy area around it would make for a perfect place to let the children play comfortably.

We spent the afternoon playing, photographing and blowing bubbles in the pristine Santa Fe sunshine. The bubbles ended up working out well. The only issue is that they're a little (okay, a lot) messy! It was worth it though. I wanted to capture Anna's family as if they were not even aware of my camera. I loved the way this family interacted with one another and how they really just went with the "flow" of things. Not every moment was perfect and that was part of the beauty of these images for me. With such a free-flowing style session I had to photograph quite a bit and there was a little more of the unexpected, which I enjoyed.

We moved to a second location— a park area and a nearby colorful mural which made for a fun background. In the park we found a sweet grassy area to hang out as the sun set behind the horizon.

Yet another truly genuine and amazing family that I am grateful to have met and photographed.

Happy start of Summer! May you truly enjoy many moments with your loved-ones.

"Back in Your Own Backyard" Austin Portrait Session Part 2

It is valuable for me to know as little about who I am photographing before I meet them. I want to know as much as I can about interests, loves and personalities before I photograph anyone. While it isn’t a recipe for guaranteed success in a session, it certainly helps to establish an initial connection. This connection is imperative to creating any portrait-whether this portrait is of a 6-year-old girl, a 10-year-old poodle, or a 78-year-old man. I’d love to share a little more from my session with the three siblings here in Austin, Texas. The mother from my previous posting, “Back in Your Own Backyard Part 1” wanted photographs that had a casual, playful feel. She wanted something that told the story of her children at this special time in their lives. She expressed that her daughter had recently lost her two front teeth and that she wanted to capture her adorable smile and lively character. She talked about her sweet boys and that her middle child didn’t like to be photographed very much, but that he was just such a darling child with tremendous personality. I asked about oldest and Sandra painted a lovely picture of a helpful and adoring boy who I was very excited to meet.

When I am choosing a time to photograph children it most often revolves around when the children are the happiest and have the most energy. Of course, lighting is a vital part to creating strong imagery, but it doesn’t matter how gorgeous the light is if you’ve got a miserable child in front of your lens. Sandra and I decided to schedule the session for the morning hours after the children had rested and been fed their breakfast. The light in the backyard was dappled-meaning that spots of light were coming in through the trees. This can be difficult light to work with, but not impossible. With three children, I had to find ways to keep them from having large spots of light on their faces and bodies especially while photographing them together as Sandra had wanted.  One of the ways to work in this light was that Sandra cheerfully stepped in as my assistant and held a light diffuser to help with the spotty light.

When I had walked around the backyard with Sandra a week earlier I visualized some areas where I had wanted to photograph the children together. I thought the hammock would be really fun but on the day of the session realized it was difficult to get the children to stay focused as they tipped and turned in the hammock. I tried sitting on it with two of the kids and agreed with them that it was hard! They had a good laugh at me then. The ground below the hammock was muddy and their feet were quickly a nice shade of dark brown. After one round of unsuccessfully cleaning I thought, “let’s just embrace this mud,” and I asked the children to lift up their legs in the hammock as I clicked my shutter.

During most of my sessions I start with a vision or a few ideas. That vision and those ideas change and morph organically during the actual session. This happens for several reasons. Sometimes there are aspects of a location I couldn’t have anticipated, the light changes, the weather changes, or a child or pet isn’t in the mood for being photographed a certain way or in a specific location. Although I sometimes think it would be fantastic if all of my plans and visions were easily realized (why not?), I’m most often thankful for the need to be adaptable because other opportunities and visions arise.

Hopefully these images remind you of the warmth, inhibition and play of childhood. Perhaps it reminds you of your own “backyard” and of the unique memories that were created there by you and your family.

I’m happy to share some of the images that arose from this unique trio of children as they expressed their distinctive personalities, in their own backyard.