Naperville Photographer, Burr Ridge Photographer

Someday I’m going to just hire another photographer to take my family pictures. I absolutely hate doing it! LOL  I find it so stressful.  All the patience I have for other people’s children just goes right out the door when its time for my own pictures.  Sigh. That’s probably why I never did pictures of my kids this year.  My poor daughter never got her seven year pictures.  I’m a bad mom!  I really look forward to next year’s pictures, as I think both of the kids will have no metal in their mouths – yay!

We lucked out with gorgeous weather, but with being the afternoon, the light was fading quickly.  And like so many others, I’ve gained weight this year, so I hate all the pictures of me. Oh well.  But here’s my wonderful, crazy, silly family.  I loved the red couch sessions this year and was jealous.  I decided I wanted in on that this year!  I also thought I would straighten my hair for something different, and now I look at myself and think I look weird with it straight. LOL  Like so many of my clients, I fretted about what to wear.  We even ran to the store the day of and all picked new items. LOL  So see, even photographers have to go through the stress of family pictures.

 

 

 

So then it was time for some quick individual pictures of my kids.  Light started going REALLY quickly, so we literally ran to the spots, I told them – just stand here.  My daughter started doing this thing with both hands on her face, and I kinda liked it, so we took several. Then I told her to stay like that, and I moved the other hand away.  Can I tell you how much I LOVE this picture of my girl?? I think this will be a timeless one. Now to decide how big to order it, because it is going up on the walls somewhere.

 

The above is my normal editing style, but I wanted to really see her freckles, as I love them.  So I enhanced them in the below image with a stronger, grittier edit.  I still love it, and I love being able to see each freckle.  You can tell what a difference editing style makes in images! Neither is wrong or right, just stylistically different.  I can’t imagine what she will look like without all those braces.

 

Then it was time for her brother.  Now, he has greatly improved in terms of getting his picture taken, but it is still a struggle.  He doesn’t smile naturally on command.  He also squints his eyes with this fake smile.  After seeing these, he asked why I didn’t tell him he was doing this. Sigh. Some day I’ll get a gorgeous image of him looking like himself with a soft smile and open eyes.  In the meantime, I am able to get images I love of him laughing.  And really, that is his personality. He is always cracking jokes, so these really do capture my 11 year old.  Unfortunately, he had recently gotten a new appliance in his mouth that stuck out like tusks.  Again – can’t wait to get all the metal out of their mouths!  But I love this one.  Don’t you just want to laugh along with him?

 

 

Then I gave my son a great responsibility and asked him to take some pictures of me and my husband.  I hung my camera around his neck to be safe and said, “This camera is worth more than you are.”  I was only kidding.  Well, not really.  I got it focused and set based on my husband and told him to just click the button.  While my husband doesn’t like this picture, I do.  I love it.  You can see how happy we are, and that is us.