Picture Perfect

For months now I have been suggesting to my husband that we take some family portraits. I prefer to have spring portraits and fall portraits, but this year things got so busy in the spring and summer, it didn't happen until yesterday. It was a beautiful day and we made a commitment to go for it.

We are big "do-it-yourself" people. We have had professional photographers take our family portraits before, but we didn't like them. In fact, we didn't proudly display them anywhere because of our great disappointment. I'd say we have these "professionals" to thank for forcing us to buy a decent SLR and start experimenting with photography. To be fair, there are photographers out there that do a phenomenal job of capturing a moment and producing gorgeous pictures - and they charge accordingly (as they should). But, alas we are cheap and creative and just do our own thing.

We are pleased with the photos we took, but there were quite a few obstacles to get us these shots:

1. My daughter always seems to have some ugly fake tattoo on her bare arms when we take photos. I don't know why, but it works out that way. A lot of Photoshop work was required to remove the martial arts graphics from her forearm.

2. The location we chose was beautiful and worked well for taking photos, except we had to go off road to get there. Plus the structure we were shooting from had bird poop EVERYWHERE, not to mention bees and grasshoppers.

3. Kids are virtually never cooperative. This time it was my daughter who was acting like an ornery five year-old. She was mopey and constantly complaining. But she looked beautiful!

4. Lighting can be unpredictable. It helped greatly that we were standing under a roof and with a flash and umbrella it kept the lighting even. In just a short time the sun did creep into our space and we had to change our positioning.

Here are the fruits of our labor:

These pictures captures our kids' personalities and (thanks to matte photo paper and my Epson printer) we do have these photos proudly displayed in our homes.