I was chatting with some photog friends today about sessions gone wrong. You see, I had big plans for a special Valentine’s Day image with all three of my kiddos, but because of all of the struggle and fighting it took to get there, I just can’t look at the pictures without thinking about how miserable our shoot was. Instead, I posted THIS ONE for today because it was more authentic and in the moment and not forced. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for me to photograph my kids together. Individually, I’m good, but the three of them together and it just ends up with me being a manic maniac and my kids in tears. I don’t like that. I don’t want them to hate the camera.

Time and time again, I remember that the best images are usually the ones that are unplanned (like the one from this morning), but it is my nature to plan. A lot. To a fault. And when things don’t fall in line with my plan, I shut down. When you have three children, you *do* have to plan. Someday, I hope I will learn to plan enough and at the same time, be flexible enough with my own kiddos to adapt. I can do that with my clients. I do it ALL the time with my clients. I preach about it over and over again at my workshops. And yet, I can’t apply it to myself. I started to go down memory lane of all of my personal photo shoots gone wrong (this one in particular comes to mind) and I suppose I’m thankful for those images, too. But I don’t know…I just wish it wasn’t such an ORDEAL whenever we try to do a shoot.

All this leads up to these images that follow up to her four year photo session. I had big plans for the shoot. In my head. But unfortunately, her birthday falls in line with holiday season…the busiest time of year for family photographers. It had been nagging in the back of my mind for weeks, “I have to get those 4 year pics taken! I have to make time for that! I have to have the perfect dress! The perfect shoes! Must have 4 balloons! I need NO rain and beautiful light!” Etc, etc, etc. There were other things going on, too…I was trying to get ready for the Holiday Mini Sessions, my grandmother was very sick, and we were very worried about why my husband’s brother had become so suddenly ill.  My mom (AKA MeeMaw) was in town to help out and I was spilling out all of my worries to her. She listened patiently, like she always does, and she said, “Let’s just go do her shoot right now. Why not? Let’s just do it.” But I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t finished planning. Where would we shoot? I was planning to drive out to this wall downtown, but even if we left right away, we would never make it before sunset. This would be a disaster!

It turned out to be a beautiful evening with my mom, my baby girl, MeeMaw’s pup, and a delicious golden sunset right here in our yard. It was all of 15 minutes. Tear free. And some of my favorite images of my little girl perfectly captured at four. I needed to go back and look at these images tonight. These were taken just days before the holiday season turned into heartbreak for all of us. It was pure joy. It was time spent with my mom. It was perfectly unplanned. It is a nice reminder to me today. Just let go, Michele. Let go and enjoy these moments enough to capture them how they deserved to be captured.