Family portraits: There is nothing better than shooting images for friends

Last month, before my trip to China, I had a chance to visit my good friend, Lauren, and her family. I had to stop by their house to drop off some things, and I figured that I would bring my camera along to capture some images of them just days before she had their third baby. I brought my new Canon 5D Mark III, a 70-200 2.8 lens and a flash. That was all I needed. The good looking family did the rest!

I called Lauren ahead of time and told her that I would take some photos, and when I arrived she had the kids dressed up in cute outfits. I looked around the front and back yard and found a spot that I really liked. We had rain clouds in the skies, so I had nice even light to work with.

I loved this blossoming tree in their front yard, so we went out there and started shooting.

I started shooting pictures with Lauren in the background, to hide her baby bump.

There is nothing better than real smiles!

And then after shooting numerous photos, I asked the kids if they were excited about their upcoming baby sister, and they immediately turned away from me and payed attention to mom's stomach.

Her son then got down and gave mom and baby a big hug. Too precious!

I was shooting images of the kids only, but asked EJ and Lauren to step in so that I could get at least one family photo.

Along the front of their yard, I saw these pretty purple flowers, so I asked the kids to come and sit down on the sidewalk so that I could take each of their portraits in front of the flowers.

Having photographed the kids a couple of times in the past 3 years, it is amazing to watch them grow up in front of my camera.

I usually don't ask kids to do anything in particular, since I like to capture them as they are. But in this case, I asked them for a big thumbs up, and they obliged.

After shooting all of the other photos, I looked around to see if there was any other good spots for portraits, and saw this low hanging branch. I had Lauren and EJ lift the kids onto the branch and then quickly move out of frame. As you can tell, there is no shortage of personality with these two twins. Kids like this make a photographer's job really easy.

After spending 20 minutes shooting these images, I headed back to my office to download and see what we had captured. I sent some quick edits to Lauren and she was thrilled. After sending 3 or 4 photos, Lauren asked me for more since she enjoyed them so much. I sent many to her (including the ones in this blog).

Five weeks ago, Lauren gave birth to their new baby girl and her sister took the images and made a photo book as a gift for Lauren's Mother's Day gift. I had lunch with Lauren this week and saw the book which has many of these images as well as some photos of the new baby. It was awesome. For those of you who are photographers, you probably already know this, but there is an amazing feeling when we can capture family history as a gift for our friends. Now I look forward to photographing the 5 of them!

Congratulations to Lauren, EJ and the family!