My daughter Lauren is 20 months old. I dislike counting months above 18 months so I keep saying she’s “nearly two,” and from the moment she came into this world I’ve been taking her pictures. My business has a strong foundation of great customer service and breathtaking portraiture, but there are two cornerstones to my foundation that remain unchanged. I’m a photographer. And I’m a mother. Little did I know that once my baby became a toddler, being both a Mama and a Photographer at the same time was not always going to be easy.
About a year ago I started to feel the frustration most mothers feel when taking pictures of their little ones. I have cute pictures with my phone, but we’re talking strictly professional portraits. The whole process started being very frustrating when my inner mother and my inner photographer started to fight. I make other kids smile all the time, you’d think I’d be able to get my own to sit and smile too. But here’s the problem with this logic… She moves! She’s heard all my jokes and all my noises. Her toys are not as interesting because she plays with them every day. And she’s so used to my voice that she is just as likely to ignore me as to look up and smile at me. And when she does happen show me a millisecond of a smile, she moves in the wrong direction!
After she turned a year old (and a disasterous cake smash session at home), I started taking her to some surrounding professional studios and gave up thinking I could ever get a good picture out of her that wasn’t taken with my phone. I’m so glad that I did. I cherish those portraits that other great photographers have taken just as much as I would cherish my own. What my on-the-go baby needed when she started to walk and talk is a new location and a new face to be fascinated with. Sometimes the usual songs and games work…but sometimes something or someone new and wonderous that your toddler has never seen before is just the ticket.
The weather has been enchanting, lately. Lots of beautiful sunshine without all the muggy heat. I found myself with a day off and a toddler with cabin-fever and I decided…let’s go out and play!! It wasn’t too long ago that I took her out to play in our yard. Don’t get me wrong, those portraits were great…but there was nothing “wow” about them and I needed me some “wow” portraits before summer was done and I took her back to her favorite studio for Halloween/Christmas pictures. I girded myself for the oncoming frustration. I built up my patience to the max and I took her favorite pink ball outside with us.
This was sort of a “redo” from our previous excursion outside. She’s got four more teeth and longer hair, and what I was going for was more intimate than the handful of the same “run after the ball, now look at the camera” shots I got before. Here’s what I walked away with…and here’s what I fell in love with.
She’s taller, too! That dress used to reach to her knees. Repurpose it with a pair of shorts and it is now a cute shirt.
Lauren sits on command (which is great for a toddler, I know it). But I can’t tell you how many times she sat in the wrong direction before we got it right. “If You’re Happy and You Know It” was my saving grace with these. That, and the leaves in the grass.
I told her to lay on her belly. That’s a common thing we ask kids to do in the studio. It’s almost impossible for a two-year-old, so we’ve been practicing at home and I wanted to see if she’d do it. Well…she had fun rolling in the grass in any case, and I’m not about to pass up those giggles. I’ve always loved her eye-lashes, and these are shots I will cherish forever as a mother.
There’s something so extraordinary about sitting on these steps. The camera was tilted, she isn’t sitting very flattering, and that isn’t exactly a smile. But I love it. It’s candid, it’s beautiful, and leaves on the concrete make me think of Fall just around the corner.
This one was literally the last shot I took and when I got it into my computer for editing it took my breath away! I couldn’t decide, in my editing process, if I liked it in black and white or color. Both ways are stunning. I tend to lean more toward black and white when it’s close up like this and you can see all the flecks of color in her eyes. But oh, the color of those eyes!!
I did not edit these eyes. I didn’t use an action, I didn’t make them a different color, I only brightened the entire picture and this is what I ended up with. This is what beautiful lighting and getting it right in-camera will do for your editing process.
I can’t wait for Halloween, when my Little Red Riding Hood will go on her first trick-or-treat. I won’t be posting many pictures here. I’ll let the other professionals take it from here where her costume and holiday family portriats is concerned. We might play in the leaves one day when it starts to get colder and I’m going to try to take a picture of her in front of her great-grandmother’s tree this year, but as a mother I can’t stress too much about it. Stressing too much takes away from the season. And my favorite season, at that.
Neeshanoo Photography 
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