I'm going to age/date myself right now...but it's for a good reason...I think ;)this is me and my sisters + my brother growing up:when it came to family photographs back then, you had two options:1. olan mills or something like it.what is olan mills?a studio portrait company that mainly did portraits for church directories + JCPenney's...below is a good example of what Olan Mills was...well-lit, very posed and leans on the traditional side of life :)or 2. your dad's film snap shots.typically these weren't always candid because film was sorta expensive to develop and unless you went to a professional film lab,the best quality you could get was kodak gold from your local pharmacy or kmart...you never really knew if "you had the shot" because you had to wait a week to get you prints back so that's why you didn't mess around with random candid's.with these, you faced the sun and squinted at the camera because then you were ensured that most everybody's faces would be in focus and well lit.okay, so why the history lesson in photography that I grew up with?because, it's a large reason on why I care so much about photography...especially for families.photography has evolved enough that one of the reasons I picked up a camera was to photograph my kids.and the digital era provided an opportunity for me to do so...and as much as I wanted!but the artist in me didn't just want to replicate what I grew up with...stiff posing didn't feel right to me as a photographer...it didn't capture my kids personalities...who I saw them as and wanted to remember them as...the photographs I wanted and have now on my walls are of my kids laughing...as in close-up-eyes-squeezed-shut-full-grin-laughing-from-their-toes photographs...the photographs I wanted and have and love of my son are not only when he grins,but when he is still and I can almost count the freckles on his handsome face, his blue eyes clear and relaxed and simply looking at me...the photographs I wanted and have and love of my daughter with her hair blowing carelessly in the wind with the sun streaming behind her,as she softly tucks her hair behind her ears smiling and simply happy...the photographs I wanted and have of my husband, looking out at our kids - his eyes gently crinkled and his jaw line relaxed...or of him laughing and tickling our kids...or throwing them in the air playing with them as they shout "higher!"...when I show up to a family session...THAT is what I am aiming at to photograph for them.real emotion, real faces...not forced, not stiff...just them being them.thank you, walker family for trusting me to photograph YOU!and one more, because Bryn...you are ridiculously beautiful :)