At Home Family Sessions

Whenever we’re taking photos we always try to put ourselves in the situation and think:
What would we want photos of?
What would we want to remember about this day, this moment?

Flatteringly, ironically, shockingly we get quite a few emails and requests to do family photos. We’ve done a few here and there, have offered mini holiday sessions but it didn’t always bring us full joy. And we always want to make sure we’re photographing something that does.

So we questioned what it was that we didn’t enjoy about family sessions and we realized it was because we weren’t putting ourselves in the situation and asking what we would want photos of, we were taking photos of what we thought we should be. We weren’t creating what we wanted, instead we were forcing ourselves to be a different kind of photographer and it just wasn’t working. Having people stand in front us, holding a cheesy smile and a stiff pose makes us really uncomfortable — yes of course you want photos of the family all looking at the camera and smiling, don’t get us wrong we believe in those too. Going along with that though we like to laugh, and make people laugh in our photos. We like to move around, tripping over ourselves because we’re trying to keep up, capturing stuff with guts and keeping the moments real.

When we think about the photos we want to have of our own kids, we want to have photos of real moments that bring back all the memories and have us sharing stories over them. We want every day moments captured, to remember those small things like how she had to stand on a stool to reach the counter, how he looked when he took his first steps, how we would cheers our mugs before eating. Call us cheesy but that’s what photos do for us and what we want to share.

Breakfast with the Takahashi Family

So here’s Isaiah, Alissa, Olive and Caleb. They allowed us into their home on a Saturday morning, still in their jammies and ready to make breakfast together. Nothing was staged or forced (we even commented how Olive really knew her way with the pancakes and well duh it’s because she really does help make pancakes) and we let Caleb walk (and fall) around everywhere. They did their morning routine and we were there laughing, tripping over ourselves and smiling because this is the kind of family photos we like.

We’re friends with these two and honestly we always look at their instagram photos and say, uuuugh they are such a cute family. And let us tell you something: they really are.

 

Wednesday we are announcing our FALL SESSIONS so back and get all the info!