These sweet children have an unending amount of energy and personality. Mom is a good friend and I knew going into the shoot that it was probably going to be difficult to get the traditional family portrait, and mom knew that too – so we made the very best of it and I had a great time time with the family. It was super sweet of her to let me guide the session in a documentary direction. Although I was able to get some fun shots that will be excellent for her scrapbooks, I knew mom did not get the Christmas card photo that we were hoping for so we arranged another meet up, made it super quick and got a portrait in less than 15 minutes. I had to laugh – I took over 100 shots in 15 minutes, hoping for at least material for a head swap if needed. These kids are BUSY. The magic happened in a moment of exasperation when mom said her kids were being a “hot mess”. The kids fell into hysterics and kept repeating her. We were all laughing and the last picture speaks volumes. Love this family to pieces and I’m so happy that they gave me a chance & trusted me to work it out.

Behind the photos | The initial plan was to take the pictures at dusk but we hit a little closer to “golden hour” than I had hoped so I focused more on color boosting than haze in the editing process. It was also incredibly windy on this particular evening so there was a fair amount of dust to work with, not to mention that it was impossible to keep hairstyles intact. We tried to choose locations behind buildings to shelter from the wind. I shot both sessions sans flash with a Canon 5D III + 24-70L.