No Trees, No Cheese—Just Two Siblings and a Whole Lot of Personality

Amazing mom, Misty, recently came into the studio for some portraits of her children, Gwen (14) and Gabe (12).

Misty told me during our initial meeting that she didn’t want the typical run-of-the-mill kids photos taken in front of a random tree smiling at the camera saying “Cheese!” (Darn, those are the kind of photos I love.) 😆

I told her not to worry. I think she already knew that was definitely not my style. In fact, knowing that we weren’t going to create photos like that, she gave me full license to be as creative as I wanted, which to a photographer is like a dream come true! ✨

Mind you, we wanted to make sure the photos still captured the essence of the kids’ personalities. To help with that, Misty brought in some extra props for fun and some that reflected a few of the kids’ hobbies. Gwen’s hobby was equestrianism (horse riding) and Gabe’s was chess.

While bringing a horse into the studio would have been cool, I don’t think the horse would appreciate climbing 3 flights of stairs. Plus, we didn’t have any spare hay on hand. So for Gwen we had to improvise a bit.

Misty and I went over our mood board together, and she shared some ideas on the looks and styles she envisioned. We were definitely thinking on the same page!

From the get-go though, Gwen and Gabe were so animated and funny! Natural actors! Misty had to intervene at times and get them to be a little more serious, and they were for a while, but once they had the camera in front of them for a few minutes, they were ready to perform! I figured it was just their natural personalities coming out, so I wanted to capture that.

Gwen and Gabe were so much fun!

Below is the first in a series. It was one of Misty’s favorites of Gwen. She ended up getting a large 9UP wall portrait for their home. The 9UP is a special kind of art piece that puts a beautiful composition of 9 separate images into one large mat. (See products button highlight for more info).

The best part of all for Misty? No random trees in the background or cheese anywhere. 😁