A family session with 9 kids? How tough could that be?

As it turns out, not so tough at all. Especially when it’s the Fullmer family. We had a great session down by the Spokane River & everybody was about as well behaved as can be—except for maybe me. As a dad of 3 really (well, mostly) well behaved girls I don’t see any way to square that number & stay sane. But not only were they sane, they were a pleasure & it was very inspiring for me to see how they interacted with each other. Truly a happy family.

Thanks to my own Reagan for going along & helping to entertain the younger ones while I was taking pictures.

For photographers: The first photo is a composite of 5 different photos so I could get a wide shot with a shallow depth of field since we had to be closer to the tree line than I wanted to.

**For the best viewing experience, open up the first photo & use the left & right arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the photos.**

We hung out at Manito Park for a little while & had some fun walking around & getting some fun pictures. Frequent visitors might recognize Ana from having helped me photograph Betsy & Chad’s wedding recently. She does some pretty fine photography work on her own. It’s always a little more nerve-racking to photograph a photographer simply because they know all the tricks. Fortunately, I think these ones turned out ok.

**For the best viewing experience, open up the first photo & use the left & right arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the photos.**

The pictures don’t lie.

**For the best viewing experience, open up the first photo & use the left & right arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the photos.**

So a nice little addition to the normal engagement session, I got to take a few photos their little boy, William. What are the chances he’d be that cute? Take a look at his parents, I’d say the number is approaching 100%. The great thing is, as natural as they were as photo subjects, I enjoyed just hanging out with them for a while even more.

I really had a great time hanging out with these guys. The kids were so sweet & willing to try whatever I was asking—especially if it was jumping off a ledge while I had my camera on its “machine gun” setting which reminds me a ton of my own girls.  My favorite part of these photos is that  the impressions of the  personalities of everyone seems to shine through in the photos.

Then, after our session was over I saw my friend Ana wrapping up a bridal session so I hopped up on the ledge of the bridge (shhh, don’t tell my wife) & took the opportunity to shoot the shooter. That makes up the last photo in this set.

For the best viewing experience, open up the photos & use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the photos.

For the best viewing, open up the photos and use your arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate through the photos.

She brought up the idea of having her daughter have a tea party on the beach & I thought it was an awesome idea! So at the end of the day we got out the big lights & headed down to the beach just in time for the wind to pick up & the waves come crashing in. In all, we only had about 5 minutes of actual beach shooting before the little model had enough of the cold & wind & we called it quits—not before getting some great shots, IMO!

Fortunately the weather was more than accommodating for the rest of the session & it was a blast for me to catch the kiddos going from being shy (notice the first subject I was offered to photograph was ‘Doggie’ the sheep) to playing it up for the camera.

Take a look by clicking through. FYI, once you open up the window, you can just arrow through the photos with your keyboard which is very cool, try it!

Thanks to Kelsey who came along and helped a bunch. Click the thumbnails to see the photos…

1. Photos have to be affordable. I saw the price list of previous photographers who did this and I was astounded by the prices. I felt like these should be priced like an impulse item rather than something that needed to be worked into a family’s monthly budget.

2. Photos have to be fun. We’ve all seen the all too common and boring photos of people standing there looking blankly at the camera.

BOOOO-RING.

The dance was fun. The photos should reflect that. My answer: PROPS!

3. Photos should be printed on location. People don’t really want several 8×10s or wallets of the dance photos. So what’s the reason for filling out forms and waiting to get 1 or 2 photos? After doing tons of research and finding a portable photo printer that could print 5×7s and get great photo quality, I ordered it and figured out the best way to get it to print at the dance (the toughest & most time consuming part). More fun for everyone that way.

What I learned: Doing it the old way has to be way easier. Boring photos are easy. Getting a reaction is tough. Expensive photos mean less photos to take. That’s easier. Sending the files to a printer and dropping them off at the school a couple of weeks earlier would have been way easier.

I worked my butt off for a couple of hours. That was harder work than shooting a wedding. Was it worth it & would I do it again? Without a doubt. It was a blast!

P.S. As a little extra, I emailed digital photos to everyone who ordered a photo so they could upload it to facebook or whatever they wanted.

Here are a few of the photos:

I’ve been trying to get used to my new Nikon D3/85mm combo (oh baby.) so I’ve been carrying it around with me. Yesterday was haircut day for mom & Kels (Reagan would have but she’s growing it to donate to Locks of Love again. Baby G & I are due for one soon). The outstanding new hairstyles, along with the beautiful afternoon light shining through our wall of windows compelled me to grab some shots that I love, so I figured I’d share.

Fortunately for me, these daughters & wife don’t seem to mind being in front of the lens.

Here are a few of the photos I took.

P.S. The B&W photos are natural light shots and the color shot was taken with my new Photek 60″ Softlighter & AlienBee.

We’ll miss seeing them next time we go back to visit.

So one of the important events this trip was getting a family photo of the four boys and our families. Of course it rained the entire week. After driving around looking for spots to get it done we ended up downtown in a parking garage where graffiti artists are welcome to show off their skills. As you can see, the kids had a blast (like always).

Since these are more of a personal project I felt I could take some liberties and edit these in a style that’s a little different than my own, but I felt the hyper-contrast look worked perfectly with the urban environment. I doubt I’ll be adopting this style for my other work.

This time the Osborn family needed their family photos done and we decided it was a perfect time to get in the studio and get some use out of it since the weather has been on the cold/rainy side. First I set up the lights against the 9′ wide white seamless paper background and had Reagan stand in to test things (the last photo is a couple of these test shots). Once they were good, the Osborns showed up and we got to shooting. They were lots of fun and everybody did great in front of the camera. They all have such great personalities which makes my job easier since I don’t really have to do anything but catch it—you know, like karate kicks and stuff.

Finally I got a couple of photos with my daughter Gwyn hamming it up with her friend—which didn’t look like it was going to happen since Gwyn was being a bit of a brat. Of course she saw how much fun everybody was having and decided it was ok to be a part of it.

Even within the confines of a small studio I think we got some great portraits and I can’t wait to use it again.

The Priebes are a great family and a celebration of what families can be. So I was honored to be able to capture them all together.

To the photographers out there who read this, this session was a great example of the importance of back-ups. I had an extension cord, 2 umbrellas, and my wireless flash triggers (and their flashes) all fail. Fortunately I had backups of everything and we were still able to go ahead with it—thank goodness.

Thanks to Reagan & Kelsey (and various Priebe family members) who held down my light stands suring the shoot.

A couple of weeks ago I got to spend some time with the Fox Family and make some portraits. Mary and Baden are some of the nicest people around and their kids are adorable with their big dark eyes. You wouldn’t know by looking at the photos that it was terribly cold out that day. I had to bump the shutter speed a bit as not to catch the kids’ chattering teeth. We had fun and got some great shots as you can see here.

Thanks to Kelsey who helped me out a bunch on this shoot by holding my light and watching the little ones while I photographed their parents.

One of the recent sessions was for the sister and brother in law of one of my other great clients. Of course, Chris and Shanna were just as great to shoot. The funny thing is I’ve been friends with Chris’s brother since we moved to Spokane 5 years ago. The only conclusion I can come to is that I was just meant to make their portraits.

Like usual, I enjoyed my time hanging out with my clients—we had a lot of fun getting these photos—Chandler smiles (or lack thereof) included. Hopefully that comes through in the images—I think it does. What do you think?

As we were getting packed up, a few people started to come around. So, like usual, I also snapped a couple of shots of 3 sisters (it wasn’t too tough since I’m pretty used to taking pictures of 3 sisters) who were hanging out at the park with their mom.

Kelsey came along to help, but mostly ended up playing with the twins, Marissa & Sierra, which was just fine.

Check ‘em out…

Of course western Washington decided to set all kinds of rain records that weekend so we had to just go for it and hope for the best. I spent the morning drooling (and buying) at Glazer’s Camera Store in Seattle (the likes of which Spokane will never know). While my brother Travis & I were in Seattle, it was beautiful—unfortunately it was the only sun we saw all weekend.

Once we got started with the session we were driving around the south Puget Sound trying to chase the lighter color clouds so we could attempt to stay dry for some outside photos. We ended up at a park street corner with trees. We got some great shots before the cold got to be too much for the little ones and headed to the cars. As soon as our doors closed the downpour started skies emptied like a fire hose trying to put out a forest fire.

Then we headed back to their home for the “studio-type” photos. We had fun playing around and getting the kids’ personalities captured. It was much more relaxed for everyone since the likelihood of death by drowning was far smaller.

So I was pleased when Shawn (dad) asked me to take pictures of his family along with their cousins visiting from Arkansas. We got together at Manito Park and got as much as we could before the cold got to be too much.

Special thanks goes to Michael for helping with this session as well as Sadie Stevenson (the oldest cousin) for keeping her cousins entertained and smiling for the camera. She also took a picture (the last photo in this post of her cousin riding on his dad’s shoulders) which is good enough to include in this post as well as deliver. Great job Sadie!