I had the pleasure of photographing this sweet family of five on Wednesday and their portraits are just so dreamy! Amy, Don, Isabella, Don Jr., and Catherine arrived dressed so beautifully and ready to shoot. I LOVE the color scheme she chose, and I love how dressed up they were! Dressing up a bit for your photo session will always make your portraits turn out that much prettier.

We had planned on meeting at a different location, but the day before their session, I stumbled upon these beautiful trees tucked behind a building that I just fell in love with. I wrote Rachel and asked (in my head I was begging. Oh, how I hoped she was going to say “yes”!) if we could shoot her session there and she happily agreed (thank you, Rachel!). These trees made for the most beautiful background and provided so much open shade!

Sweet little Catherine was a little shy, but she powered away so sweetly and allowed me to get so many good pictures of her! I think it’s just the sweetest thing showing the little guys the back of my camera and encouraging them on how amazing their doing and complimenting their sweet smile and their family. It not only allows them to give me a little bit of trust and they tend to not be quite so nervous about the camera in their face, but little people love looking at themselves! After the whole session was finished, we were standing up to say our good-byes and sweet little Catherine walked right up to me all snug to my shoulder, ready for me to tell her how great of a job she did and allow her to see her sweet little face. How special to have such a sweet little girl come up to me. Isabella is so grown-up for her age and is so tall! While she may be grown up, I could tell she has a silly side to her, but she was a little hesitant to share that with me. At one point I tried to share a lame knock-knock joke to freshen up their smiles and apparently, I am just not funny at all! Haha. Don Jr. is just so sweet, a little shy and I could tell he has a gentle soul. He did such a great job during the whole session and gave me the sweetest smiles. Isabella and Don Jr. helped take care of little Catherine so that we could get some good portraits of mom and dad. They are such good big siblings to little Catherine. Her little eyes were always on them. Don was not the biggest fan of his pictures being taken (neither is my guy), but you wouldn’t even be able to tell in these photos! Rachel looked so flawless and looked so genuinely happy to have pictures of her family taken all together. I am so glad that I was able to give that gift to her!

Before we even set out to photograph their family, Rachel had written to me and shared with me that they had not had their family pictures taken in 10 years. That did put quite a bit of pressure on me to get these to be perfect, but what an honor and how much more rewarding it is for me to be able to give them these precious portraits! Their sweet family whole and together smiling, loving each other, and displaying who they are for my camera to capture. I really just wanted to photograph them all day long. They were just so sweet to work with and they cooperated so well that they made my job so easy! Thank you so much, Matthews Family, not just for being a part of my portfolio, but for allowing me to be a small part of your lives!