the smith family - portrait session

i had the joy of shooting a session with an uber-fun family this past weekend as the daughter's christmas gift to her parents.  brooke got in touch with me a while back and told me that when she realized that the last real family photo they had had done was when she was in 6th grade (she's a college grad now), she knew just what she wanted to give her parents as a special gift.

i was thrilled when i checked the weather on friday and saw that it was supposed to be overcast and in the mid-60s saturday afternoon for our session.  yeah, that didn't happen.  it was overcast -- to this photographer's delight -- but it was in the upper 40s and w.i.n.d.y.  thankfully, the smiths were troopers, and we made the best of the chilly day (it helped that we did a lot of laughing -- kept the body heat up!).

we started out with some of the more traditional family portrait-type shots...



...but i never want my photography to stop at typical.  as we shot, we talked about unique characteristics of their family and what really makes them tick.  and a running theme started to appear pretty quickly:  brooke is a bona fide daddy's girl, and i'm pretty sure her daddy is equally as smitten with her.  (love the ring her parents gave her for graduation, too)...



mrs. smith even joked that she should probably just step aside and let those two finish the shoot themselves.  but something tells me that mr. smith is pretty happy to have her by his side.



brooke and her mom have a really neat relationship, too, and they kept me in stitches while we were together.




i hope i don't get mr. smith in trouble with this next one, but i told the girls to hug him together and rather than have everyone look right into the camera, i hoped to get a more natural interaction shot, so i asked him to pick one of them to look at.  in light of our previous conversations, i think i might have put him in a bit of a pickle.  oops!!



thank you, smiths, for a fun afternoon with plenty of laughs!