Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Family Pictures

I have a constant debate with myself about family pictures.  I much prefer more relaxed, outdoors family pictures to ones taken in a photo studio...especially the cheap photo studios like Wal-Mart.  Of course hiring a professional photographer to shoot on location is ideal...but often expensive.  I usually compromise by taking my own pictures of my kids with our own camera.  We have so many family members (grandparents, birthparents, etc...we send out around 15 cards for Mother's Day and Father's Day) who want copies of pictures of our kids, that it can get pretty expensive even buying pictures from the school photographer or Wal-Mart because the standard photo packages are never big enough.  That's one of the reasons we invested in a good camera...so we can be our own photographer.

However...I can't often get a great picture that good of the whole family because that means handing the camera to someone else who may or may not be that great at framing the shot, checking for distracting things in the background, keeping the kids attention, etc. 

We actually got a decent family picture several months ago when we were at my mom's house.  (Thanks Mom and Vati...can't remember who was manning the camera.)

But it really can't hold a candle to these more recent family pictures we've had taken.
It's been years since we had a really good family picture taken (as in none since Sweet Pea was born), so I was excited that even in our tiny rural town, we have a good professional photographer.

These were taken by Jessica Greenfield of Jessica Greenfield Photography.  Jessica was super flexible about the shooting location (Don't our friends' have a charming yard?!?) and spent extra time with us, even though we'd just booked one of her "mini-sessions."  She even gave us a super reasonable price to buy printing rights for our pictures since...as I mentioned before...standard photo packages are just never big enough to supply the pictures we need.  (I know Jessica will travel to your location, so you if you live in central Washington (the Columbia Basin) and are looking for a good photographer, I can highly recommend her.

I was just hoping for a few good pictures of the whole family...

...but we were also able to squeeze in some individual shots.

These shots of Sweet Pea are a near miracle because she was not very cooperative.  We'd given up for getting this one on the bridge, and then at the last minute she decided to cooperate.

It's hard to pick the best ones...but I think these of Little Brother might be my favorite.

It's not often he cooperates this well for pictures.

And of course you've got to love this toothless smile.  Hard to believe she started First Grade less than 2 weeks ago.


And we got a sweet picture of me and my sweetie.  (Not sure what it is about him, but he's always had a hard time smiling for pictures.)

So thanks for letting me show off my beautiful family.  I promise I'll have a fun kids' activity for you tomorrow to really get back in the crafty swing of things.  (And if you're one of those relatives who's expecting some of things pictures to show up in your mailbox...I'll get them ordered soon.  If you have preferences of sizes and which ones then send me an email. ;)

And if you missed yesterday's post about what we've been up to all summer, you can scroll down or see it here.

4 comments:

  1. I can't believe how well they turned out withh all the kids smiling..no one making faces. Any breakdowns at all? They're amazing.

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  2. Wow - awesome photos. Hooray for a wonderful photographer!

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  3. They turned out beautifully!
    Lovely family shots and adorable portraits of the kids.

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  4. Absolutely beautiful! What an awesome photographer you had. Your family is beautiful.

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