Behind the Scenes of our Family Photo Shoot

It was about time for a current family portrait, and my mom was the woman for the job. She always is! It's so nice having a personal photographer.

This photo session took place the Thursday before Mother's Day, by the river. She always takes between 50 and 100 shots and we'll end up with 3 or 4 decent ones (because of us, not her!)

She's a great photographer, and we have oodles of pictures to prove it! She's had her own business, Photo Images, since around the time I was in junior high. Whenever she took my pics when I was a teen I'd ask her to use the soft focus lens (so I'd look dreamy) . She doesn't do many photo shoots anymore unless she gets a call from a past customer, but there were several years when she kept pretty busy doing weddings, high school seniors, families, etc.

I brought my camera along for the occasion so I could catch some candids of the kiddos after my mom was done with us. I've been remembering to bring it with me way more than I used to. I'm actually a little surprised my camera hasn't worn out over the last year or so as a result of how many pictures I've made it take. ;)

All the pictures I've put on this post were actually taken by me. Two of the pics my mom took are already on my blog home page (whatever it's called), and the disc she gave me only had the best few shots on it anyway, so I didn't think I'd need to add them again here. I don't know why I always feel the need to explain myself, but I do...





I like Cora's face in this one. :) It's totally "her".





Too bad Jane's hand got out of the picture. She spontaneously jumped up, so I didn't have time to adjust the zoom-- I just had to take the pic quickly or miss it entirely.



Look how casually Ollie is standing. :)



It was sort of chilly that evening, so Jane had her jacket in a bundle and her crazy face in place.



I really like this spot. It's not hard to tell that the kids did too.





I'm so glad she didn't fall in the river.







I have to mention a funny part of the photo sitting. You know the neat picture of us all in and around the tree? We only got one good shot out of that pose because apparently Ollie was cooperating so well that my mom was getting carried away in her excitement. To get Ollie to keep smiling and holding still in his cute little pose, my mom started screaming, "yes! yes! yes! yes!" I started laughing and telling her to stop. I couldn't believe my ears! Remember, we were back behind the trees where no one could see us, which made it more humiliatingly humorous. I'm pretty sure any passersby would have heard her from miles around! What would they think was going on back there?! She was kind of irritated at me for ruining what could have been a good string of pictures, but what was I supposed to do? I was embarrassed! But it was pretty funny.