This family was one of my last that I photographed before the pandemic in 2020 and it was a total joy to reunite with them after all these years! This is a large, chosen family (and therefore a longer than normal blog post, bear with me!) who spends a ton of time together, so why not combine their photos? :) The first small group is Paula and Aaron and their high school senior Sydney. The main focus of these pictures was to capture Sydney’s senior portraits. It’s been a while since I had the opportunity to do senior portraits and it was so nice to work those photography muscles again! Especially because I absolutely love working with seniors – they’re a ton of fun. Sydney, especially, is such a kind person but she’s also incredibly creative. She’s an extremely talented artist who’s able to sketch amazing portraits in mere minutes. She has a passion for creating characters and has plans to go into the creative writing field, where I know she’ll excel! I’m also a huge fan of her pink hair and her Doc Martens. Paula and Aaron are awesome parents and people too, and I loved getting to spend more time with them!
The second small group is Jackie and Seth and their two little kids (and their amazing dog, Albus Dumbledog, who is an absolute sweetheart). These kids cracked me up. Their daughter immediately ran to her room to grab her digital camera, and she started taking pictures of me. She also showed me all of her past pictures on her digital camera, and then proceeded to document me documenting. She’s a little ham – loving to smile and pose for the camera, and smart as a whip. She’s very close with Sydney, and Syndey painted the super cool space mural in her room. Her little brother is an impressive cook. Is he a toddler? Yes. Does he take cooking extremely seriously? He honestly does. It’s like he was a master chef in a former life and has been reincarnated but remembers all of his chef things. It’s not a normal way for a toddler to cook – he is really, really into it and uses his utmost concentration. He likes to add things to pots, stir things in pots, supervise his sous-chefs, and he is extremely dedicated to his craft. Jackie enjoys spending a lot of time in the kitchen, and she says that he’s always loved to be in there cooking with her. It was adorable! We spent some time on the playground and at their home before they worked up an appetite and a toddler cooked for them (joking – kind of).
The third section is the time that these two chosen families got to spend together in the morning! Jackie and Paula met in 2002 in Las Vegas and have been best friends ever since. The two families have such sweet interactions and we had a great morning, having a ton of fun, talking about music and Dune, and spending time together. So nice to work with all of these folks again!
