My job can be extremely rewarding at times–well, most of the time.  I find that I am so joyful most of the time when presenting clients their images because I know the love that resides deep down inside of me, that many of my clients have as well.  A love and a burning desire to have meaningful images to keep for a lifetime.  I can never, ever have enough images of my boys and my family–pictures just make me happy.  

I know that sometimes–quite often, when it’s a session with little ones–that my clients walk away from the session defeated.  They spent a lot of time picking out the outfits, preparing for the day.  Pictured in their head the kind of images they might be able to treasure after our session.  Looked forward to it for weeks.  And then they arrive.  They had a long drive.  Their little is having a bad day.  Doesn’t like their picture taken.  Hides from the camera, or runs around and misbehaves.  They break out all the promises and bribes that they can think of.  Still, things look bleak.  This happens A LOT.  I am 100% sure that probably 50% or more of my clients are unhappy with their children’s “performance” during the session.  I know they are upset.  I reassure them–I promise them that they only remember the bad in the session.  That they don’t remember the moments that I was able to capture because the parts where they were embarrassed or frustrated or wanted to scream because their child kept running away are overpowering.

Such was the case for this session.  The family drove about an hour.  They had a fifteen minute session.  Their little one does not like getting pictures taken.  About eight minutes into the session, they were prepared to stop the session and leave and chalk it up as a loss.  She wasn’t cooperating.  I put my camera down for a minute and asked them to give me a little more time to see what I could do–I was goofy, I sang songs.  I picked up my camera and just propped it up on the ground–not to my face. Continued being silly while trying to push the shutter button every couple of seconds during my loud parts.  Sure 75% of those images are out of focus. . . but those 25% I never would’ve gotten hadn’t I shot from the ground.  And slowly, she warmed up.  Not fully–but enough to still get wonderful images for them to give as gifts, and hang on their walls and hopefully remember such a special time in their lives.  They are only little so briefly.

I feel so warm on the inside when a family is not sure they will get anything good from the session.  And then it turns out that they have such a hard time deciding that they purchase a few extras because they love them so much.  It blesses my heart.