I know it sounds crazy that as a photographer I rarely take photos of my own children, but unfortunately it's true.
I take my kids pictures, like "real portraits" about twice a year!
Now don't get me wrong, I take their pictures as much as any other parent, but they are usually dressed in whatever clothes they picked out, with their hair either unbrushed or fixed with their own two little hands, and since we play outside a lot they are usually dirty. So, I wouldn't consider them to be nice portraits.
But, like I said about twice a year I spend some time finding outfits and picking a place for their portraits. I have had past portraits with my kids that were unplanned and turned out amazing, although it seems with more kids and older kids I need to plan more.
So, this spring I ordered some handmade dresses from Etsy.
The two older girls dresses came from Amanda's Shop, Kaleidoscope Of Colors.
And Willow's (the little one) dress came from Linda's shop, LAF it up Creations.
My plan was to take the girls in their dresses to a field of wildflowers, but decided last minute to take the dresses to Florida with us. So, the pictures were taken on the beach of Pensacola Bay at Naval Air Station Pensacola, literally just steps from where we were staying.
Here are the pics!
Now that you have seen the pics I will tell you the real story.
I waited until the last sunset of our vacation. Who wants to work on vacation, right? And yes, taking photos of my kids is work! Anyway, it was our last day there and I waited until what I thought was an hour before sunset to tell the girls they needed to get off the beach and take a shower for their portraits. So, we went in to find out we had no power, which meant we had NO hot water! And I tried, but they refused to take cold showers.
So, I sprayed their hair with a water bottle, brushed it and on with the dresses. They were sandy, sweaty, and oily from sunscreen, even their hair had oily sunscreen in it! But, we headed to the beach anyway and somehow we almost missed the sunset!
Most of the time was spent trying to get Willow to look up from the sand AND keep my other two girls smiling so when Willow did look up I could get a good shot of all three. You will notice in every picture of the 3 at least one of my big girls is making a bad face, but hey, at least Willow is looking up!
So, willow did great by herself and Kennedy and Brooke did great together, but my goal of getting that perfect shot of all 3 just didn't happen.
Many things as a parent turn out "not the way you planned." That goes for our portrait sessions too, even as a photographer mom. But, while I have these photos to remind me I will always remember the crazy times with my little girls that never turned out as planned.
