Location, Location, Location (Family/Kid Sessions)

Have you scheduled a session with The Life in Your Years Photography?  Good for you!  Good for me, too!  One of the things we’ll be talking about when we start planning your session is location.  This is YOUR session.  We can do it wherever YOU want.

Now that I’ve said that, allow me to take this opportunity to try to convince you that the best place for a family lifestyle session is IN and AROUND your home.

Sessions at home tend to be more intimate, more relaxed, and more personal. Remember, we’re trying to do more than make a pretty picture here — we’re trying to tell your story, and what better backdrop for your story than the place where most of the action takes place in real life?

Everyone’s more relaxed at home.  There’s no place safer or more comfortable for babies, toddlers and little kids, and everything we might need (snacks, toys, changes of clothes) is right there.

Your home doesn’t have to look like a Pottery Barn catalog, either…it should reflect you, imperfections and all.   Are your walls covered with toddler art?  Awesome.  That budding artist will get a huge kick out of seeing that in the photos 30 years from now.  Is your house a work in progress?  Great — don’t you think you’ll love seeing how you lived in it while you worked?  I really think you will be surprised with what we can do at home — and that even the things you think you’re not happy with will make you go “awwwwwww” in 30 years when you look at your pictures with your grown children.

By the way, just because we’re “at home” doesn’t mean we have to do the entire session indoors.  If we want to play around outside the house and around the neighborhood, we can.   Of course!

Have I convinced you yet that at home sessions are the bestest?

You can see more recent examples of at home sessions I’ve blogged by going HERE.

Okay, okay, you’ve listened to my schtick on why I think at home sessions are (usually) the absolute best.  Still want to do the session someplace else?  We absolutely can.  Truth be told, just about anything goes.    Maybe your family is all about touch football right now and you’re envisioning a family scrimmage in the park.  Or there’s a great beach spot that you feel is important to your life as a family right now.  Or you want to freeze some images of you family at the club where you just spent an entire, magical summer.  Or  lately, you’ve been walking into town after dinner with the kids for an ice cream and your heart feels so full when you do it that you want a souvenir of that little routine.  Or there’s a family tradition that you’d love to capture in photos and keep forever to show your grandchildren.  Or you’ve got some other activity in mind that needs to be done outside of your home.  Or whatever!  We’ll talk, and we’ll come up with the location that’s just right for you.  (Some recent examples of great sessions that we did on location are HERE, but we’re only limited by our own imaginations!  (Oh, and things like distances and permits and stuff, but those details can be worked out in most cases … )).

A note about timing.  If you’d like a session that’s all outdoors, it’ll be scheduled at sunrise or sunset — you know, the second most important ingredient of an LYYP family session is the LIGHT (the first being YOU and your family, of course), and that’s when the light is best.  If an all-indoor session is what you’d like, we’ll plan for late morning or early afternoon, when your house is bright and cheery.  For an inside/outside combo, we’ll plan closer to sunrise or sunset and work around the light.

Feel free to bounce any ideas off me at any time!