As a dad with 3 girls, one of my favorite parts of shooting a wedding is photographing how the kids deal with a long wedding day. They run the extremes of what everybody is feeling throughout the day. When most adults keep their emotion in check to some extent, kids just react to the day. Whether they’re bored, happy, angry, or playful, it shows. That makes it fun for me—even when they’re a little shy.

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

A few weeks back I jumped on a plane over to Seattle with my eldest (they each get to take turns) to meet with a couple of brides who’s weddings I can’t wait to shoot, and while I was there I got to shoot a couple of family sessions. The extra cool part of this was both the dads in the family sessions are two of my best friends in the world & have been for about as long as I care to remember. Since I live a few hundred miles away I don’t get to see them nearly enough & it was great to hang out with them & their awesome wives & adorable kids.

The weather rained the entire weekend—with the exception of the hours I spent shooting—so the sessions were wet but not rainy—thankfully. The sessions took place at one of my favorite parks, Tumwater Falls Park in Olympia. If you live on the west side of Washington make sure you visit & when you do, make sure you take the trek all the way back along the water & see if you can find the heart-shaped puddle. If you make it there during the Salmon runs I swear there’s more fish in the stream than water.

While we were over visiting the other side of the mountains—sill refuse to call it ‘the coast’ unless I see the actual Pacific Ocean —we had the chance to hang out with one of Gina’s friends from high school & photograph her little ones as a surprise birthday gift for their daddy (kind of a recent theme at MS Photo!).

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!