Oftentimes people will make the comment “I bet your kids pose for you all the time.  Do they just love getting their picture taken?”  Um, no.  At least not usually.   They last about fifteen minutes, but they do suprise me once in a while by being especially cooperative.

So, what can a mother do?  Make it as painless as possible!  The shirt my eight year old is wearing – it’s his favorite shirt.  The shirt I’m wearing – that’s my favorite shirt (PS it’s a Westmama Designs!).  And my husband?  That’s one of MY favorite shirts of his. There were no curling irons involved in this shoot, no scratchy sweaters, no shirts & ties.  I did actually find some sweet winter hats just two days before, but, alas, I forgot to have the two kids put them one.  And best of all, we had a fire with marshmallows!!!   And hot dogs, but we ate those after the marshmallows.  We love to have s’mores nights as a family and it dawned on me one day last summer that this was what I would do for my family Christmas portrait for 2011.  I had been planning this shoot for 5 months!

And so this is us.

Make your portrait session yours! Take something you truly love (in my case, chilling with my family), and create for yourself a unique and incredibly personal portrait!

And because I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on this image and “How did you do that???”, here’s a little technical info for you: I used a super awesome super-wide lens with the camera nearly sitting on the ground and a flash off to the right. And, yes, I used the self-timer. Lol.