Growing Up | Naperville Photographer

I was opening up this session to blog, and it hit me just how much kids change. I saw this family this year, and these boys have grown up SO MUCH since this session!

But let’s get to reminiscing about this fall family session. I am a total dog person, so if you are a family who considers your dog to be a member of the family, then PLEASE mention this to me when we are first talking. I love including dogs in family (or really any) sessions, but it is something I need to know up front. I need to be sure we choose a location that allows dogs and that gives me options for the dog.

This location gave us wonderful fall foliage and woods to go with the casual boys, and also allowed plenty of exciting smells for their cute dog.

 

I used to love this location because it gave me lots of variety. One of the things I liked best was this set of stairs to the bridge. Since then, they have removed the bridge and stairs, which breaks my heart! I love a good set of stairs. Sigh.  What cracks me up with dogs is that I originally wanted the dog to sit sort of sideways on a single step, but no, he wanted to put his bum up on one step and front legs on the next step. LOL  I think we tries a few times to get him correctly situated. Eventually, we just gave up and let the dog do what he wanted. LOL

 

These brothers were good sports, though like most boys, they were doing this purely for their mom. But I made it as painless as possible for them. I have an array of bad jokes ready to get some smiles from even the most annoyed of tweens. lol

 

It is also a pleasure to photograph moms and dads together during family sessions, too. Too often, parents focus too much on their kids and forget that THEY are important, too. I can’t tell you how often I hear, “Oh, we havent’ had pictures of just us since our wedding!”

 

When you are selecting your family photographer, be sure they can create pictures that work for your family. We wanted casual and boyish for them. So at the end, I promised I would let them climb this interesting tree. This one may be my favorite of their family pictures just because it was so different. And such a good pup to just sit and be attentive. Of course, there were probably squirrels and whatnot everywhere to distract him.