This past week within 18 hours of Jenny returning from meeting her new little 2 week young niece out in Arizona (fully N95-ed on the planes both out and back) we were lucky enough to get to capture a wonderful family new to the state of Indiana in some beautiful autumn leaves! Mom Krystal reached out to us about a month ago wanting to schedule a Family Portrait Session with us in the beautiful fall season here in the Midwest/ South Bend and we were happy that they were available on a weekday in mid/ late October this autumn before they headed out to Connecticut to see family.
This wonderful family moved here from Iowa across a couple states to Indiana about 5 months ago with their dog Stanley & 2.5 year young son Payton. Families with young ones often haven’t had Professional Family Portraits since their wedding day (or maybe their child’s Infant Session), so we were excited to meet and get to photograph this sweet family together for their first time all together-!
We photograph kids professionally for Family Portrait Sessions, at weddings, AND for a non-profit based in Indianapolis multiple times a week (and our niece and nephew are 3 years young & 2+ years young), so we can confidently say that 2.5 year young Payton is a great, well-mannered kid. We ourselves have our 2 big dogs and elderly cat, so it’s also always a blast to get to photograph dogs- especially sweet & patient Stanley (who reminds us of our younger doggo Rizzo)!
Mom Krystal has been getting to know Indiana through her job in the past 5 months as has dad Brad who’s a surgeon over in Elkhart. We’ve been back here in South Bend, Indiana for 6 years (7 years in the “area” after 12 years in a few other states for Jenny/ 26 years in another state for Jason) and one of our favorite parts of our job is introducing client families & couples to new places- especially if they’ve moved in from out-of-state-! About 65% or more of our clients are from out-of-state OR spent their first 18 to 25 years in another state, so it’s really fun to get to know them and hear a little bit about why they moved to Indiana/ Chicago/ Southwest Michigan (and hear a little about their previous state and current life now in this area)-!
This was their first time in these woods/ at this spot on the river and we chatted with them about other spots near them that they could go enjoy this lovely autumn (and in the coming years). This sweet family now lives over in Goshen, Indiana - a city about a half hour away & which a portion is heavily populated by the Amish. The northeast part of our state of Indiana, a bit of Ohio, and a portion of Pennsylvania are the main hubs for the Amish in the United States, so those new to our state/ that area of the state always have fun observations to share with us about the Amish areas. It’s definitely a culture shock at first to see buggies, more uniform 1-colored clothing, no technology, no non-gas electricity, no modern clothing, etc out near Amish country, but we’ve found through some of our hobbies that most of them are extremely nice & helpful (and it’s just really cool to hear them speak in Pennsylvania Dutch with each other).
*Back to the Family Portrait Session at hand, though. This sweet little family put up with us taking them to about 5 spots On Location including a log, fun teepee, little spot for a “picnic” with one of our autumn blankets, and a couple spots by the river! Luckily even though it had rained for days leading up to their Family Portrait Session (including the entire night prior), the clouds cleared for their Session and it was beautiful weather! With that cold snap brought in by the rain it was in the 40s that day temperature-wise, but it felt great with the sun shining. They really brought the nice weather with them!
We love to get to photograph families in the autumn leaves and we even got little Payton to throw some leaves (seen a couple photo collages above- on the top left) & play with some sticks in a teepee made of sticks-! We hope that our photography over the hour wasn’t too much torture for him, but we’re so proud of he and doggo Stanley for doing such a great job being patient and looking at the cameras-!
Thanks so much to Krystal and family for having us capture your adorable Autumn Family Portrait Session (and we hope that you had/ have a great time out on the East Coast in Connecticut)-! We’ll be shooting you an email with your full Proofing Gallery very soon.
Thanks so much as well to the rest of you for stopping by to check out this Weekly Wednesday blog post (which due to the busy 2022 has turned into more of a monthly or bi-monthly Wednesday this year)! Since wedding season is over, we’ll be back next week with a local Southwest Michigan Engagement Session (with TWO more doggos-!) for one of our autumn 2023 wedding clients-! Make sure to check back in next week and in the meantime have a fun-filled autumn Halloween weekend-! (Ours will be filled with carving pumpkins with a handful of our friends one day, haunted hayrides out of the city with some fam another day, and of course building our costumes so we can had out candy at our house for the 8th year straight-!) Happy Halloween 2022-!