I feel a need to have a professional take photos of the girls each year. It’s a funny thing because I’m almost never happy with the end result. They are too staged, my girls don’t cooperate, and I never feel like they really capture who they are at the moment. Nevertheless, I feel the urge to record each stage with professional quality and I think way too much about it, spend far too much on it, and I’m lucky if I can find one or two of the expensive photos that I like enough to put on the wall.
This year I was looking into photographers and our neighbor, who runs one of the lodges in the reserve, offered to take some free shots for us. He has a spectacular camera and so we went to the river and tried to get the girls to pose for a family shot and then let them do their thing while he snapped some candid photos. I much prefer outdoor pictures to studio photos and I’m so happy with the way many of the pictures turned out. I’m sharing a few of my favorites here – all these photos were taken by Chris Kilner.
I’ve given up on that perfect family shot – it’s just impossible to get my girls to sit still, smile, and look at the camera all at the same time but this is the best family photo we’ve had in a very long time.
I really love this photo of Boo. She is going through a stage where she does not want her picture taken and will usually hold something in front of her face or turn her back on me whenever I try. I love that this candid shot shows Boo being Boo, not posing and not avoiding posing.
Kooks is my water baby. Never happier than when splashing about in her favorite element. For the record this was not meant to be a water shoot but I don’t think we would have any decent photos if we’d tried to keep them by the river and didn’t let them get wet.
As luck would have it, we had a professional photographer come to the reserve to photograph the lions just after Chris took these photos. He offered to take a few family photos and some of them are really incredible. The quality is awesome and they will make beautiful enlarged prints. I’m thrilled to have them but they are more posed and I don’t think they capture my girls as well as these shots do. Seeing these shots makes me long for a much better camera and a better eye for photography to go along with it.
These photos are wonderful! Candid shots are always my favorites.
Such beautiful children! I love outdoor setting for photos too.
What great pictures! I agree that candid shots really capture kids’ personalities better, and you just couldn’t ask for a better setting!
Love Kooks splashing in the water! Nice shots.
Bah- don’t worry about trying to stage the”perfect family shot”. It doesn’t exist- at least not the way we envision it. Truth be told, when you’re an old woman feeling nostalgic for the days when your little ones were running underfoot, it will be THESE photos that trigger memories and emotions from your early life with them.
If, by some slim chance, you happen to get a family picture all perfect and centered and everyone looking at the camera, odds are down the road you’ll think to yourself “who the heck are these people?” and flip through it quickly to get to the images that show the essence of your children and not the ideological magazine version. These pictures are perfect!! Such a beautiful happy family!
(Is it alright that I envision your life a bit like the cartoon The Wild Thornberry’s? I remember watching the cartoon as a girl and wishing I was Eliza.)
Great blog! And I love those candid shots. My son actually loves having his picture taken so he can see the results, but everytime we tell him to smile he gets this crazy smile that he would never have in real life. It’s pretty hilarious, but it just doesn’t look like him. Now I just get him interested in something else and then snap away. The expressions I get that way really capture who he is and what he’s feeling…much more moving than a posed smile.
I’m really enjoying your older posts too, especially the 3-year-old curriculum stuff. You have a very similar style to me, it seems. I also feel like no matter what we do at his age, he’s learning.
What gorgeous photos! I love pictures of children in their element. I think that says a lot that, although it wasn’t meant to be a water shoot, you embraced it anyway. And now you have beautiful pictures of happy children.
These are gorgeous photos! They’ve captured the energy and giggles of the photo shoot:).