Melissa E Photography: Just Be

I have been working on a wall of pics for our house for the past few night. Last night I scanned through our pictures and got frustrated. I have a million pictures of our kids, but only a few of them together, and none of them reflect the little boys that they are.

For the past few months I have been trying to change the focus of my photography. I'm tired of portraits that look perfect, but don't reflect reality. As a photog, this has meant I have had to let go of a little control and embrace spontaneity and imperfection. It's harder than I thought it would be, but I am loving the payoff. My last family session was one of my favorites and I felt like I relaxed and just let the family be themselves.

Today I set out to take some pictures of my boys the way I want to remember them. I'm not going to remember them smiling unnaturally into a camera.

Right now I want to remember the way Luke says, "dis!" and points at everything around him. I want to remember his curiosity and wonder and craziness.

I want to remember Park's spunk. I had a wardrobe all planned in my head and guess what? Park didn't wear ONE thing that I wanted him to wear. And I let go of my control and told him to wear whatever he wanted. (After hiding the "happy 90th birthday grandma" t-shirt that he wants to wear every day.. baby steps people!)

Unfortunately, I'm not crazy about these pictures. Our first spot was too sunny so we drove around until I found another spot. Next time I not going to a place surrounded with birds, cars, and trains. You can imagine how awesome it was to try and get my boys to pay attention to each other when there was that much going on!

But I'm getting closer. And these pictures reflect my boys better than any other pictures I've taken. I'm just going to wait until Luke isn't in a Tasmanian devil phase and try again. :)