Family Portrait

Every year that goes by, I mean to get a family portrait... but then we just don't get around to it. I'd love to have the images to look back on in the future, but it's a big investment for us to get a good photographer to do them. We don't have a decent photo of the four of us, just a hodgepodge of poorly lit cell phone pics where only two or three of us are even looking at the camera usually.

Our most recent family portrait: in 2012! Photographer: Bethany Schiedel

About three years ago--before I was even pregnant with Bronte--we had some beautiful photos taken by Bethany Schiedel. She's a fantastic photographer & gets amazing photos of children in particular. When she showed us the images from our shoot in 2012, we asked her how she captured all of us looking at the camera & smiling. The truth was, she hadn't... all in the same photo. She did some amazing & undetectable photoshop work to combine different images to produce the one you see here. She doesn't airbrush you like a Vanity Fair cover or anything, but she can do some truly magical things that produce the family photos you've always wanted.

About a week ago I noticed that she had a few spots available for her day of mini portrait sessions, so I jumped on it & booked us a session. This morning we got up, tried to straighten out everyone's hair & pick outfits that would look good without being matchy-matchy. Our dryer has been broken for a few days now & it's too cool & damp to hang dry any clothes at this time of year, so our clothing options were limited. We managed to have breakfast, I even got some makeup on--totally forgot mascara, however--& we arrived only a couple of minutes late. A record for us.

It was a quick in & out session in Bethany's bright studio, which was good for the kids, though Linnaeus wasn't terribly cooperative. He has had a bit of an aversion to having his photo taken lately. After Bethany got shots of all of us & various combinations of two or three of us, while L knocked over the reflector & B tried to get at the Sharpies, we headed back home again. It was lovely to work with Bethany again & I can't wait to see the results of our session this time around.

If you want more information about Bethany Schiedel & her photography, take a look at her gorgeous website: Images By Bethany.

Disclaimer: this is not a sponsored post, nor did anyone ask me to write about Images By Bethany. :)

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