What's Making Me Happy 2016
2016 gave us a lot. For me it was a blend of professional growth (launching Modern Glamour comes to mind), personal growth and shifting sense of our collective identity as a community and a nation. It was also another year in which I was honored to meet and photograph so many beautiful, interesting and wonderful families.
I've separated my WMMH review into a few categories. We start with Family Portraits!
Check out my favorite family portraits from this year here:
Family Photography Boston | Witness to Family Building
FAMILY PORTRAITS OVER TIME
As winter creeps in, outdoor portrait sessions become more and more unviable. I've been rediscovering how much fun it is to document the life of a family, and make family portraits inside a home. A portrait is composed of many things: the faces (usually), the place (the environment in which we take he pictures), the pose (our body language and our gestures of love) and the clothes(what we choose to adorn ourselves with.) All of those things come together to tell a story. When approaching family portraits this way - they really do become a time capsule of who we were at this moment in our lives.
And who we are changes. Today I am sharing a few images from a beautiful family portrait session in their home, on the occasion of their daughter's first birthday. I came over before the gusts arrived to document their morning. We played in J's room, we read some books, we explored the stairs with our curious little legs, we had a snack and inadvertently fed the dog. We tried on a birthday hat. We decided we didn't like it. At all.
The story doesn't begin here, of course. Back in 2011, I first met C and C at their Sheepfold engagement session in Easton. They brought their adorable puppy with them. The next year I photographed their gorgeous winter wedding at Willowdale Estate. Years, and many moves later, C is finished with her PhD and they've returned to be near family in Boston. Delighted to be continuing to document their family's growth.
Aside from the image above, I invite you to scroll through these images in chronological order.
ENGAGEMENT SESSION AT SHEEPFOLD IN EASTON
WINTER WEDDING AT WILLOWDALE ESTATE
FAMILY DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY, PORTRAITS AT HOME
Boston Family Photography | At Home With Twins
Embracing the Chaos
Embracing the chaos - the phrase that rang out when this wonderful mother of six month old twins originally called to plan her family portrait session. She and her husband have a great energy and partnership in parenting.
We began the session at their Brookline home, using the sunlight streaming in through the living room windows. Later we all bundled up and went to a local park to get a few images outside.
Documentary Storytelling
Part of the fun of documenting a family in a photojournalist style to watching and waiting for the moment that expresses the family's energy and the gestures that translate their love and affection.
This is life, unscripted and unfiltered.
Documentary storytelling shows your family as individual and specific, pieces that come together as a whole as well as the relationships between family members.
Family Photojournalism in your home
Another reason I love photographing people in their own spaces is that these images become time capsules of so much more than the age of the people in the image. These documentary family photographs will certainly recall what life felt like, the memory of what was your everyday routine that will, of course, evolve.
Your life, what it is really like in all it's delightful chaos and beautiful imperfections, is a story worth telling.
And Of course, we got some camera aware smiling family portraits. Those are important too!
