We're breaking our blogging mold today by sharing one big post as a recap of the last few months of mini family sessions we've been doing. What's a mini session, you might ask? Basically it's a shorter version of a traditional photo session where families shoot for only 20 minutes with us and the shoot yields a fewer number of delivered images. Typically, we schedule a marathon day for ourselves when we do minis so that we can shoot 15-20 families in one weekend. We had a mini marathon scheduled for June in Somerville, Mass and the weather didn't cooperate. Wouldn't you know it that the rain date got rained out too. So what were we to do except reschedule everyone at various times of the year during our travels to New England and also take advantage of the studio for some sessions during the rain. Everyone was so flexible and wonderful in scheduling again so basically what would have taken 2 days ended up getting scheduled in a three month span.
Now that you understand the back story let me gush a little bit about these beautiful families. I'm part of an online parents group that I joined a few weeks before our daughter was born. The group capped off around 200 women and basically we share bits and pieces of our lives as parents and people and show support for each other in our various journeys. It's an incredible group of smart, talented, strong, thoughtful and compassionate women. When several of them reached out to me to photograph their families, I opened up the opportunity to the group to plan out a mini session marathon. Getting to meet many of these families and children whom I've only met online was such a treat. I'm sure you can relate to the phenomenon of online friendships and how interesting the dynamic is when you know so much about some people but have never met them in person. I tell myself it's sort of like pen pals of old. :) I'm needing to end this post so I'll end with this: never have I been given so much joy as I am gifted as when I photograph families. The love is immeasurable and eternal and it's such a gift to document. If that's not an impetus for creating art I don't know what is. Thank you, S1TM's for showing up with so much love.
Erika + Steve = Engaged
Oh this session makes me so happy. It's the time of the year when everything is a little slow. The weather is grey and chilly and you might rather find yourself bundled up with a good book than out exploring outside. We're in 'off-season' mode here on Summer Street as we busy ourselves with lots of admin work that needs to be done (hello taxes!) and planning for all of the beautiful fetes that will happen later this year. I'll come right out and say it: it's not as much fun as shooting every week. That changed last week when we had the chance to photograph Erika and Steve's Engagement Session on Steve's mom's farm in Billerica. Erika and Steve are fun loving and sweet as can be. They will be getting married in a few short weeks at the Willowdale Estate and we're so excited about capturing their wedding. They have an adorable daughter, Lyla, who was an absolute peach during their session. Did we mention the horses? They acted like old curious farm dogs as they trotted over to us and stuck their muzzle in our lens. So fun. We insisted they take a few family photos in addition to their couple photos. Aren't they just the sweetest together? I love seeing our clients not only as amazing and supportive partners to one another - but also as parents. The love that beams from this family is just more than I can take today. As always, we're left feeling incredibly grateful having the privilege of capturing life's greatest joy: love.