Mama + Me portrait sessions are so sweet and I love to see that so many moms in my hometown are taking the time to get in front of the camera with their littles lately with local photographers.

Shannon chose the location for our session and the vibrant colors of the scenery were fabulous. I always appreciate when a client gives me a location where they want to shoot because I know that they are either comfortable with the place, or the place holds a special meaning for them. The evening of our session was beautiful, the grass was cool and the sun was shining. The kids were very easy to get along with and the baby made it through half of the session before any tears (that is a success in my book any day!). Shannon is gorgeous and her kids have amazing smiles, so my job was easy when it came to getting everyone to smile at the same time! I approached this session like my typical family portrait session, half-posed, half-candid. The organic moments are so important to me to show emotional connections.

Enjoy!

behind the pictures | we were back and forth in shadows and dappled light, not much of the session was in full sunlight. I know I talked earlier about staying authentic to where the picture was actually taken (ie. not overly editing to make shadow pictures look like full sun). When moving back and forth between shadows and other lighting, it’s just important to me that the skin tones stay accurate and cohesive, so small tint/temperature/exposure adjustments become key in post-editing. When I have a skin tone that I am happy with in specific lighting conditions, I then use the settings in that picture as a base for the rest in the series. When perfecting skin tones, it’s not fast but the outcome is always worth it. I completely hand edited all of the color pictures and used Mastin Labs LR presets plus hand edits for the black + white photos. I used a Canon 5D III + 35L + 85 1.8 lenses for this session.