Family Pictures

I HATE HATE HATE family pictures. I LOVE to take them of other families, but hate getting them done for my family. I forgot how much I hate them until this week. Megan (my business partner) and I have been taking family pictures like crazy this fall. We were talking over the weekend about how we have been so busy, we haven't even thought about our own family pictures. I was in Idaho at the time, so we decided we would do our family pictures Monday. We would bring both of our families and take turns shooting for each other. I planned on running to the store on Saturday to pick out some clothes while I was in Idaho Falls. That never happened.

Monday rolled around and I realized that I didn't have any clothes for us to wear. It was about 1:30 and I was supposed to leave at 3:30, that gave me a very small window to come up with 6 spectacular outfits that weren't matching, but coordinating, and talking my kids into actually wearing the new clothes.

Outfits set me back a few minutes, I couldn't find the shirt Michael wanted to wear, and I couldn't find him a shirt that would work at the store. So, I had to run back home and grab half his wardrobe and bring it with me.

I call Megan on my way, because I forgot to look up the directions on how to get there. She gives me the instructions, which I thought I followed to a T, but alas, I was wrong. I tried again, backtracked, and started over, wrong again. I call Megan, at this point I'm about 15 mins. late. She explains to me where I went wrong, and I made it there, just in time for the sun to set.

We were so rushed to try to get SOMETHING, ANYTHING, before it was completely dark, just so we wouldn't have to re-shoot, that neither Megan or I notice the port-a-pottie and parking lot behind us, instead of the beautiful trees. With some fancy photoshop work, I'm sure I can make it look decent, but mostly just for documentation, not for blowing up and hanging on the wall.

So at this point, I'm really disappointed and frustrated. I woke up the next morning with the ability to see the humor in it all. Megan and I have a philosophy that we explain on our website about making your picture day fun, and happy. Our picture day was anything but fun, happy and easy going. I wanted to try again, this time using our philosophy. It was 8 am, the kids were all awake, and in a great mood. All the clothes I had bought for pictures were in one big heap in my room. I gathered them, passed them out, and told the kids we were going to go try again.

I'm so glad we did. It was a beautiful morning, and the location, was just perfect, I knew I wouldn't get lost since it was just a block away. I wasn't able to get a family picture since I was acting as photographer and Michael was at work, but i got the most amazing pictures of my kids.

Here is just one of the beautiful images I got, I will be posting individual pictures of the kids once I have all of them edited. But, I have redeemed myself as well as learned a lesson.