Tag Archives: family portraits

Just a totally stunning family is the only way to describe these folks. We were so happy to hear from them since it had been a while since we photographed them for their Debut parties for both daughters a few years ago. They are just beautiful people – fun loving, nice, and well, stunning!

We were on the road in Chicago when we got the call that they wanted to come in for a family photo session on a day when they were dressing up to go to a gala reunion event. The event was 4 days away and we had a slot available so it worked out nicely. When this family does something they do it in style, and in style was how they arrived at the studio for sure! One of the primary goals of the shoot was to get a family portrait to replace an older one above their fireplace and this one is a clear candidate for that:

totally stunning family

But while we were at it we grabbed some photos of the couple, some of the kids, some of just “the girls” and just “the boys”. They were changing into outfits with each one more beautiful than the last and the colors just pop against the red background. What a fantastic session! Check out the “family hug”!

totally stunning family

Now get ready for some crazy trickery – look at the total reverse we pulled off midway through this vine! Red on white, white on Red! Ha!!!

Tricky "reverse" white-on-red-to-red-on-white! Siblings from an awesome family session!

We’ll finish with the distinguished gentlemen…

…and the gorgeous girls – they look like three sisters instead of a mom and two daughters don’t they?

We hope you enjoyed this fun and stunningly beautiful family session. We were thrilled to have them back and we certainly enjoyed our time with them again as we knew we would!

Such A Cute Smiley Shmushy Boy!

June 27, 2014

Such a cute smiley shmushy boy was here with his parents recently! That’s really the only way I can describe him. Okay I guess you could use sweet and squishy too – any way you put it he was awesome and his parents were really nice too. We had a lot of fun – lots of laughing and lots of Spanish too! Ally just wanted to eat him right up.

Smiley Shmushy Boy

See what I mean? Love this kid! You can really get a feel for someone’s personality even at this young of an age – he is just a good natured smiley happy little boy, and why shouldn’t he be? That’s how his parents are. Peek-a-boo games are fun with the little ones to get them going sometimes and this session was no different with calls of “Donde esta Leo?” from his mom! If you follow this blog you know I often like to include behind the scenes vines from the session. This session was notable for producing one of my all time favorites! Leo was totally in motion while his mom was holding him, and then it was like the little man was completely entranced when he saw that he was on camera – look:

The hypnotic power of an #iPhone… LOL

Ah the “hypnotic power of an iPhone” indeed! That clip cracks me up every time I look at it…

Meanwhile here is a great shot of the happy family of three all together…

We also got pictures with mom and dad separately – really sweet. First a little boy and his mommy:

And then the proud dad with his son:

We hope you enjoyed the sneak peeks from this session! We always enjoy such a cute smiley shmushy boy like Leo!

A Family Session With Four At Five And Under!

June 18, 2014

A family session with four at five and under can pose a challenge on paper no doubt, and Ally loves a challenge! Of course we do a lot of planning and take plenty of time to make sure we get the photos we need, and when the kids are well behaved and cooperative that certainly helps. There is a fine line however – “well-behaved” at a young age can mean “not allowed to be kids and have fun” if you’re not careful, and we do want to capture their personalities. This particular crew struck the perfect balance – they had plenty of fun, but they also listened and stood where we needed when we needed and we were able to get great results!

Four At Five And Under

Such a fun family! We would be remiss if we did not mention that we have met Rabbi Yarden before since our daughter has volunteered at Friendship Circle for some time now – an outstanding organization that is doing phenomenal things around the globe. If you are not familiar with Friendship Circle I encourage you to take a look at the important work they are doing for people with special needs. He and his wife Bayla are both on staff there so it was nice to have them and their family here. This vine should give you a little behind the scenes flavor of how this session went…

Great fun as this family shot comes together!

We stayed with the simple pure white background and we love the outfits these adorable kids were wearing. Each one got their own turn in the spotlight for this next series of portraits from youngest to oldest:

A great group as you can see! We enjoyed our time with them and we hope you enjoyed the photos!

A Mom and Two Daughters Together Is A Work Of Art!

June 10, 2014

A mom and two daughters together is a work of art without a doubt! We would love to see more sessions just like this one with a mother and grown daughters. Having them together is very special especially if they are not living in the same city and so are the results!

A Mom and Two Daughters

Meanwhile I’ll apologize if this is cheesy (and she doesn’t know I’m putting this in this blog post) but Amy is the mom and I want to give her a plug. Part of the reason I worked “art” into the theme here is her business is Artworks by Amy and we love our very own “Frameable Faces Artworks” she made for us which we display here in the studio. Our business card holder that greets you when you enter the studio and our outgoing mail holder were both made by Amy. She does fantastic work on all kinds of items. Here is the vine we posted when we first got ours… as you can see Ally was pretty happy!

She loves them! New ✉️ & biz card holders from local biz http://t.co/y2cN7JanO4!

Fun right? Okay sorry for the little PSA, now back to the photos…. 🙂

Here are a couple of nice photos of mom and each of her daughters individually. We love the connection here! So sweet.

Here is another vine and this time it is a little bit of behind the scenes of this session of these lovely ladies!

Mom & Daughters together – so fun! Marla Sternberg @marla_sternberg

Amy was all smiles and she looked so happy we snapped a couple of her by herself!

Now that’s a happy mom! We hope you enjoyed these photos – we think they are proof that a mom and two daughters together is a work of art indeed!

The Cutest Expectant Couple Ever!

June 5, 2014

The cutest expectant couple ever came to our studio for a maternity photo session and we loved having them here! Tetyana and Cergiy are having a boy and they are so excited. We were happy to be included in such a special time in their lives and to take some fun photographs. Allow us to share some wonderful sneak peeks from their session!

cutest expectant couple

Tetyana had some really fun ideas when we met for the consultation including a couple we had not done before. One of them was the idea of painting Cergiy’s hands blue and creating hand prints around the growing baby in the womb. It wasn’t even really that messy! We made a fun behind the scenes vine of this. Take a look!

Such a cute couple and fun #maternity session!!! ❤️

…and here are the results:

Isn’t that cute? There is so much love in these photos! Now we don’t want to embarrass them but the other thing we have to mention is how much we love their accents – so fun and they are just happy fun people. These next two poses are probably our favorite maternity poses. We love all of them but these are pretty consistently special every time we do this. This time was no exception.

This is just beautiful of Tetyana by herself.

There is such connection here – it’s wonderful!

It is pretty clear to us that this will be a lucky baby who is born into such a loving couple’s lives, and that is part of the reason maternity photos are so special. A couple that is excited enough to document and preserve a moment of anticipation as their family starts to grow is worth celebrating. You can see why I called this post “The Cutest Expectant Couple Ever!” We hope you enjoyed these and we cannot wait to meet the little baby boy!

Persistence Paid Off With This Happy Family!

May 27, 2014

Yes persistence paid off with this happy family! Sometimes life, scheduling and various circumstances can get in the way of a scheduled photo session. What are you going to do? Sometimes it happens and that is just the way it goes! This fun family was supposed to come to the studio once before but it didn’t end up working out. We stayed in touch and ended up getting it rescheduled. Then, the day before the session a minor sports injury occurred which threatened to “leave a mark” on one of the boys the day before the shoot! Could the session be foiled again?

persistence paid off

Well as you can see by the fun family photo above the little guy shook it off and we were able to do the session without even resorting to any injury retouching! I am not even going to tell you which brother it was! Nothing to see here people! Nothing to see that is other than just great pictures! We hope you enjoy these sneak peeks. Next we have a couple of individual shots of these handsome young men. We like the way these look in black and white of both little brother and big brother:

persistence paid off

Next we have a fun behind the scenes vine and as you can see we worked with several cute poses!

This was a fun family pose from a fun family session!!!

For the final sneak peek which we will share with you here Grandma got into the act which is always very special.

We are happy we finally got the chance to hang out with these folks and we hope you liked the photos from their fun session! As we said before, persistence paid off with this happy family and all is well that ends well!

A Family Session With A Young Director Firmly In Control!

May 1, 2014

This session gave us a chuckle for sure. The son in this wonderful family was one tough negotiator. He pretty much ran the entire session! This little guy is a driver and we are confident that he will be the one to get things done when he gets older! It was definitely a family session with a young director firmly in control! First let’s take a look at the family portrait:

Young director firmly in control

It was fun watching Ally go back and forth with him as he commanded Ally to “Take the photo before my eyes get squinty” or “Wait delete that one!” or “Only 5 more good photos – and I’m officially counting” or “That’s not manly!” Ally loves a fun “challenge” and we had a lot of fun while getting some great photos. The next couple photos are priceless. Let’s start with father and son enjoying a good laugh!

Young director firmly in control Boys love their moms that is for sure. Ally definitely captured that in the next photo:

Last but not least our director got his own time in the spotlight! Young director firmly in control

We hope you enjoyed these! We certainly enjoyed our time with these folks and especially with our little director!

A Pro At Two Months Old!

April 12, 2014

We had the total pleasure of photographing a family new to our studio with an awesome little smushy two month old baby boy with a thick head of hair and a totally easy disposition. When babies get beyond two weeks old they start to sleep a little less and it is anybody’s guess how the session will go because sometimes their napping, eating, and pooping schedules start to shift around. Well this little guy was so easy to work with! He was really a pro at two months old!

Two Months Old

We did block off plenty of time for this session – sometimes for the little ones you need more time if you are waiting for eating, diaper changing and the like, but we did not need the extra time. We started with some shots of just the baby since that was priority number one and he was fast asleep and ready to go.

Two Months Old

Next we brought the rest of the family into the act, and when I say the rest of the family I really mean the rest of the family – including the kitty! We love when families bring the pets along, and Ally loves cats (we have two of our own). What a nice family – and the dad loves football so that automatically makes him cool.

Here is a fun behind the scenes vine of the action!

Cute baby cute kitty cute family!!!

…and the family portrait!

As for the mom – what a sweetheart! Ally captured this wonderful shot of her and her little man on the grey backdrop after we finished photographing on the white. So sweet!

We were so glad to meet these folks and we really enjoyed our time together with them. Especially the baby – as I mentioned before anytime we get such a pro at two months old in our studio it makes for a fantastic day and fantastic photos! We hope you enjoyed them!

Kloe Melted Our Hearts!

April 9, 2014