Dear Parents on Family Photo Day

Dear Parents of Littles on Family Photo Day,

Family photo day can be stressful.  It’s coordinating outfits and keeping them clean.  It’s smiling and looking at the camera at the same time.  It’s the day that no one naps.  It’s the day that you spend all of your time making your kids look good and then sneeze in the car while applying mascara and have to dig for a baby wipe to clean up the makeup mess.

I cannot tell you how many parents step out of the car when they meet me for their session and everything that day has gone wrong.  They are stressed and short with their kids and they just want to get the session over with.  And you know what?  I totally don’t blame you for feeling this way.  We spend our days looking at other people’s perfect instagram lives and miss out on the reality that no one is perfect.  No family is perfect.  No kid is perfect.  And that is so ok.

Can family photos be less about smiling just right and looking at the camera and more about capturing the essence of how much you love each other?  Let’s delight in your littles and how they scrunch their nose when you tickle them or the joy that comes over their face when you whisper, “I love you” or my personal favorite… “I’m going to eat you! Nom nom nom!”.  It’s so much less about perfection and the photo on the Christmas card and way more about pausing a moment in time when your life was full and busy and hard and good and sweet.

If that sounds like you and your family, let’s get to know each other!  I’ll race with your kids and teach them a game or two.  I’ll be happily patient while your kids be your kids.

And often times, when you let your littles be silly, that’s when the sweet glimpses of their truest self come out.

So much love,
Hannah

 

These photos are of my awesome niece Abby.  She’s silly and fun and beautiful and full of life and love and spunk.  This is the magic we created when she was carefree and just herself.  Frozen princess bandaid and all…