Baseball bats and soccer balls, trampoline and guitars | a family photo session in Ridgewood New Jersey

Being a Bergen County family photographer I photograph families from all over Bergen county – a lot of times we do sessions outdoors – be it a local park or a downtown spot.  And while I do love those outdoor locations I always encourage my Signature Session clients to do their sessions at their homes – where we are able to have the best of both worlds – pictures of them outside and doing things that they love at home.

And that’s just what we did for this Ridgewood family.   Mom wanted to capture her kids personalities and during our pre-session consultation I learnt a bit about them- they love sports and play instruments so I suggested we got that documented in photos.

I loved spending morning with these guys – they were relaxed and laid back and up for anything.  We were planning to photograph the family playing their instruments and while the Dad and kids played their real instruments this Mom thought it would be funny to pretend play her toy guitar and that’s just what she did!  This was one of the most hilarious pictures I’ve ever taken – and if it were my family I would totally be using it as my holiday card photo:)

But one of my most favorite moments of the session was at the very end – I was wrapping up when this girl asked me to go upstairs to her room and get an image of her and her toy giraffe that she’s had since was a baby.  I love that image and think it is so meaningful to her but what I loved the most was that the girl WANTED me to take that photo.  So many times when kids (and parents alike) think about family photos the visions they have in their heads are less than flattering – unnatural poses, fake smiles, saying ‘cheese’..  this is NOT what photo sessions with me are like at all and having kids enjoy them proves that and makes me feel like I am doing this family photography thing right:)