After a week of record breaking temperatures for this part of the year, we finally caught a break. High of 65 or so, and sunny! It was perfect! Kim (one of the daughters) had contacted me quite some time ago, back in December I believe, asking about family pictures. I was actually in the process of changing my branding up for family pictures and I’ll start this blog off with that.
As some of you may know, I’ve been in the process of separating family/baby photography from my Steffen Harris Photography branding – which now focuses primarily on Weddings and Seniors. I wanted to be able to provide a service for photography that was affordable but also pretty painless. Weddings and seniors to me are almost 100% based around the experience and part of this experience is coming into the studio to view your pictures for the first time. I love this time because it’s always exciting. However, with families and babies, like I said above, I wanted to make this process as painless as possible – quicker sessions (still lots of amazing pictures) and packages that include the digital prints. Families are such a fun session because it’s so laid back and there’s no stress like what you have with weddings and even seniors. Don’t get me wrong, I thrive on this stress – but I also love laid back sessions like families as well. 🙂 So Studio 26 was born and because the primary focus of Studio 26 are babies/children the inspiration for the the name came from Matthew 18:2-6 and it talks about how you must become like a child to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Have you ever seen kids dance or play? They don’t have a care in the world what you think abou them, they will dance around like no one is watching and I think that’s a HUGE inspiration to us as we grow up. So many times as we become older, I feel like people become more and more concerned about what people think about them – and it shouldn’t be this way. 🙂
When it comes to family sessions, you never know what you’ll get. With weddings, I meet with the couple multiple times that we are practically friends by the wedding date, seniors – well, they are seniors, babies are pretty easy to know what you’re getting, but families… Are they a fun family? Do they have a lot of issues that they’ll be trying to hide behind fake smiles (oh yeah, fake smiles show)? Will they all cooperate? And such questions as these go through my head because typically when we meet for the first time, it’s at their session. Fortunately, Kim’s family was SO much fun!! I had a blast with them and they were a very cooperating family. We even got some baby pictures in the mix too, and the lighting was just so perfect that the few pictures that were requested became 50 in just  a couple minutes. I even got my favorite kind of baby picture, and that’s where the tongue is out. If you remember my baby picture of parker (even his brother’s baby pictures I got him again), I love this picture, and I think I’m going to aim to get one at every baby session – even though you can’t tell a baby to stick their tongue out. Overall, this was a great shoot. We shot out at Lake Sara in Effingham and the sun peaking through the trees provided amazing light, and I could not stop taking pictures!
