Welcome back to this Weekly Wednesday in May/ Spring-! This week we wanted to share with you a sweet Southern California Family Portrait Session that we captured 4 weeks ago out around Calabasas, California. We captured this Spring Family Portrait Session in Southern California about 15 minutes from Calabasas. (For those of you who may not know, Calabasas is the city that the Kardashians live in-! A mere 7.5 years ago we used to live in Santa Barbara, California an hour north of there for three years in our 20s for additional Fine Art Photography degrees that we were getting about 10 minutes from the city that Oprah & Ellen DeGeneres live in- Montecito).
This sweet family is actually comprised of 2 dogs (a 2 year young pug & a 10 year old puggle), mom & dad, and their kids who were 8.5 months young & 3.5 years young at the time of their Family Portrait Session by their home in Southern California. For this Session we (as always) wanted to provide the family with a beautiful time of the day as well as location to frame them within, so we gave the lovely family the best time slot for their Spring Family Portrait Session and they in turn gave us about 5 to 7 locations that they may be interested in for their Spring SoCal Family Portrait Session (both ideas within their city that their home is in and some in Malibu). We always allow our Family Portrait Session clients to have multiple locations (& outfits) unless utilizing a large expansive park or venue, so they opted for a large expansive park near their home that lends itself to some pretty diverse and beautiful backdrops.
For their Session this family chose a palette of blacks, jeans, and classic neutral colors for layering that some of our other clients’ Holiday Family Portrait Sessions in Chicago have opted for in recent years. We always chat with families prior to their Family Portrait Sessions about which custom palette/ color scheme we’d suggest for them and their given the venue(s), time of year, etc. and this fam opted for a classy classic. We’re hoping that next time (potentially next year) we can even involve their 2 dogs in their Family Portrait Session-!
Often our client families who’ve hired us 1 to 12 months in advance to photograph their Family Portrait Session will take our Clothing Guide Magazine suggestions and if unsure will let us know about the availability of our suggested palettes within the family’s wardrobe. Some over the past 14 years of Professional Family Portrait Session Portraiture have even sent us photos of their closets, the Pinterest Boards they’ve put together for family clothing ideas, emails and/ or texts to our business email address and/ or business phone line in our office showing the potential layers of clothing, style ideas, etc. ((Some other families that we work with will even go out and buy some new layers/ clothing for the momentous occasion to ensure classic Family Portraiture that will last a lifetime and age gracefully))-!
More about this sweet family, though. Within their Family Portrait Session images so far you may have noticed a headband and some contraptions on 8.5 month young Harrison. Harrison was born with non-hereditary pretty extreme deafness that wasn’t full confirmed until a few months of life. Harrison’s first two weeks of life were filled with at least 6 transfusions so that he could live, so during that time mom & dad were more focused on his bodily health than his senses being perfect yet. Once they found out that Baby H was fully deaf, then began the battle to get cochlear implants- the ones you see in the Family Portraits above. Once H was 5.5 months young he had surgery to receive his cochlear implants (shout out to the amazing ENTs & mom who made it all happen) and when we took these images he’d had his implants for 3 months-! ((Immediately after we left Baby H started showing even more signs of his implants doing their job at around him being around 8.5 months/ 9 months young- woo))!
Little Ellie Juanita at 3.5 years young is a fantastic sister to her little brother. At almost 3 years apart these two crack each other up, love interacting already, and idolize each other. Ellie (because of other photo shoots that she’s had with another photographer for her birthday and holidays) is also amazing at hamming it up for the camera, so we had a blast laughing with her as she played with the local flora, her dad, her baby brother, and her mom.
(As you can see below we weren’t kidding about little E being pretty funny/ fun)-!
We’re so thankful that when we were out in Southern California this April/ Spring that we narrowly missed the non-stop rains out in Southern California (the ones that seemed to go on forever and were unprecedented)-! Climate Change and Global Warming at large have vastly changed the weather and climate in Southern California pretty dramatically every single year for the past 11 years it seems (from our in-person experience) and the ramping up of non-stop rains, mudslides, fires, and earthquakes is unsettling at best. We’re always hoping for the safety of our friends, their families, our families, and their homes all in Southern, Central, and Northern California, but without fail the beginning of every year seems to bring new scaries to the environmental scene (not only out there, but also here- having had FEMA in our city 5 years ago for completely unprecedented Indiana flooding up here near Chicago & Michigan).
On a lighter note though, we did have a blast capturing wonderful family out in Southern California this spring/ late April-! We wanted to throw in some of our favorite less posed imagery that we created here at the end (as Jenny prefers unposed candids and most of these images throughout the entire gallery were captured/ created by her) as a reminder that Instagram & social media images of “perfection” are generally not reflective of reality (as we all already know). There has been a huge shift in media finally showing unposed, imperfect imagery and we’re definitely here for it!
We hope you enjoyed this Calabasas Spring Family Portrait Session this fine May day in 2023-! One huge reminder to leave you with as we sign off for the week: Imperfection is the actual perfection in life. There will always be people who are richer, poorer, smarter, less intelligent, wiser, friendlier, less friendly, less accomplished, more accomplished, more extroverted, more introverted, etc than you and that’s ok. “Live and let live” or so they say. As I’ve always reminded my loved ones & kids (and adults) of every generation: Push yourself to do what you can/ want to do, but other than that you should always strive for what you can handle (in a healthy way).