Guys, this session is my whole heart for all family photography. As much as humanly possible, I want you to play and enjoy and  remember how much you love love love being theirs.

Keep in mind, I say that as a parent of a three-year-old myself and BELIVE ME I KNOW that sometimes things are not this playful — that sometimes we have to adapt and calm and soothe and just breathe with our small children to get them through a storm of feelings they don’t yet know how to process. But those moments, of being the calm home-base for our children, can be beautiful too.

More than anything, I don’t want family photos to just be portraits of people standing next to each other. I want them to be portraits of people connected to each other, engaged with each other and enjoying each other.

Here are some of my favorites from Hana + Elia’s delightful mother-daughter session (from a round of mini sessions I did at the Lumen Room last August) where we blasted “The Greatest Showman” and they sang and twirled and laughed and were together, connected.