Family Photo Shoot

I thought it was about time to hire a photographer for a family photo shoot. I hope to do this every year or two to have current photos of our family. I think it is totally worth the splurge for a professional photographer to do a shoot once every couple of years. I know you can get more affordable pictures in a portrait studio, but for me, I would rather save up and have less frequent photos that are super stunning. If the portrait studio is your thing, that is cool too. After all, this is America, land of choices. And actually, we decided this would be our Valentine's Day gift to each other (but we waited until spring to get the greenery). Of course in my Type A sort of way, I made a huge spreadsheet with many photographers, their rates, what's included, my impressions, etc and finally decided on Moseley Photography. Let me be clear: I have no affiliation with them whatsoever. I did my research, decided on them, and paid the full fee. I am just a satisfied customer. My criteria:

• The pictures needed to look better than ones I could take. I know this should be a no-brainer, but some people are sort of in training or amateurs doing this for really really low rates. That wasn't what I wanted.
• I wanted the high resolution images to be included in the cost. Some photographers will give you a certain number of prints with your package, but I wanted to get my own prints and have access to the images forever. Penny's high school graduation slide show? Oh, just wait.
• Willing to go on location.
• Best price after these other things considered.

 We had our shoot a few weeks ago in a local park, and I am so thrilled with the photos. I think what we chose to wear was perfect–nice solid colors but not too matchy-matchy. We ended up with over 70 edited shots, but here are a few favorites.

We had three of them blown up to 20" x 30" canvas prints (thanks, Living Social deal!) to hang in our newly-finished family room. I will be sharing pictures of that space once the pictures and curtains are hung. We chose the first two images and the third to last (the one of Penny standing), but I will probably order smaller prints of a few more for our living room photo wall. I hope to do our next family photos in fall 2013. I think it will be nice to get fall colors next time. And by then, we will have another little munchkin crawling around...