No rules, just right | Atlanta Child Photographer

First off, I hope you all had a fabulous Labor Day. I know I did. I wish I could say that I relaxed all day but that is not the case. Saturday I had a client, which is what this post is about and after that, I went to my best friend’s birthday cookout. One great things about that is that my client lives less than a mile from my best friend and that helped me be on time for the party. What a great coincidence! I laughed and talked so much that night that Sunday morning I had no real voice to speak of. Now that’s fun. Sunday, I did nothing. At. All. It was glorious. Monday, I did laundry, went grocery shopping then I visited my mother and one of my sisters. By the way, I had great food all weekend long. 

My latest session was with a beautiful family of four. During the consultation, Akeela told me she had a 21-month-old and a 5-month-old. Now, I like a good challenge but I knew this would be interesting. If you know anything about children, you know that one and two-year-olds can be, what’s the word? Active? Busy? Independent? Challenging? I’m sure you get the point. No matter how cute they are, and Ariel is as cute as they come, they are going to make me work. And work I did. I think it’s times like these that make non-child/baby photographers look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them I photograph children/babies. 

Those were just the tip of the iceberg and happened later in the session. Early on, when I arrived, my client was getting her makeup done by the wonderful Jamecia Bowers of Beauty by Bowers. During this time, I set up my backdrop and camera and scouted out other areas. Ariel, the cute little 21-month-old was running around. Every time I looked at her, she would run away. Akeela did tell me that she could be moody, so I kept my distance. Eventually after a few games of peek-a-boo and reciting colors, she got curious and decided to come over. That’s when I asked her to “help” me. I tried having her hold my gray card for color balancing but that didn’t work. So, I just asked her to stand in a certain spot so I could test my lighting. She chose to sit and this is what I got.

That wasn’t exactly what I wanted but that’s what I got. I actually wanted to take some of her without her bonnet. She let me take it off but then had me put it right back on. Ah well, I tried. Since Akeela was still getting her makeup done, I asked Julian, her husband, to take a few portraits with Ariel.

Yes, we had to work for those too. She would either try to wriggle out of his arms or scoot away. The others were really cute, I just thought this was the funniest one. It would have been helpful if she has sat where the light hit her properly but that would have been too easy.

Once mom joined in on the fun, not too much changed. Ariel was still trying to get away. Not sure where she was going to go but she knew she didn’t want to be where we were doing what we wanted her to do. Les sigh. Anyway, the show must go on. Now we has to up the stakes and add Ariel’s 5-month-old sister to the mix. Here is one of the successful images we got with Ariel kissing her sister.

Hey, I’ll take it! Then we tried to do a few family pictures and those were the initial ones I showed at the top. During our phone consultation, Akeela told me that Ariel loved holding her baby sister. In fact, Akeela said if we took Joy from Ariel, Ariel would cry. That really didn’t seem to be Ariel’s frame of mind that day. To me, this image says, if “someone who just doesn’t care anymore” was a person. You can see Akeela rushing in to make sure Joy doesn’t roll onto the floor.

And this one…Ariel was supposed to be sitting on the couch but she preferred to sit on the floor. She looked so darn cute that I couldn’t help myself.

Believe it or not, I did get some really nice shots of the family. I’m showing more of the not-so-great ones because they tickled me so. By the way, one other thing that Akeela told me during the consultation is that Joy sleeps all of the time. Somehow, I knew she wouldn’t sleep while I was there and I was right. She woke up from a nap and stayed awake. In fact, I believe Julian was the one who said that that was the longest she had ever stayed up. Imaging that. (Do you hear the drip, drip, drip of sarcasm?) Just so you know, here is one of the family images that I plan on sharing with them at their ordering appointment.

They really are a beautiful family and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to photograph them.

”Family is not an important thing. It’s Everything.” ~ Michael J. Fox