We have a new image on our wall, which made me realize I hadn’t shared our family portrait session from a few months ago here yet! So I am now :)

Last summer I was teaching my photography class and one of the students asked me about photographing his family.. I told him of course we could set up a session and he said “maybe it’s silly, I’m learning how to photograph I should be able to photograph my own family, it seems wrong to pay someone to do it…” and I told him “it’s funny you should say that…” before explaining that I was hiring another photographer actually to come out to our little neck of the woods to photograph my family… I always take our portraits (heck I take my own portraits and am now teaching a self portrait workshop I love doing it so much) but realized that I wanted something that was less about my work and more just about our family. I believe images and celebrating who we are together and as individuals is important and part of that is making sure the images happen!

I’ve followed Sean Flanigan for years, I think I emailed him just as I was starting out, before he’d struck it as one of the top ten wedding photographers (yes I’m saying I was watching his work before he was uber cool lol) and when I saw he was going to be going through Michigan last fall I absolutely had to have him stop by and visit us, he graciously agreed to add a day to his trip and we hung out, he photographed my family and we had a great time visiting.

Hiring someone to take our portraits was beyond a great experience, besides getting the amazing images to treasure forever – we got to spend time really “being” a family, celebrating who we are AND I got to see what it’s like for my clients, what it’s like to have someone you don’t know pointing a camera at you, I found out I was right it is really pretty cool.

So thank you Sean for spending the afternoon (and evening) with us it was fabulous and thank you even more for capturing my guys and me so beautifully.  I had to share a few!

all images copyright  sean flanigan www.seanflanigan.com