| Payton Tarter & Family | Christmas Quick Session |

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all had (and are having) a wonderful Christmas week with your families (don’t worry, I am too – this post was scheduled before I left the office all the way last Wednesday). But what better timing for a family Christmas session post then the day after Christmas right?!?

You may not know but Payton is not only one of my class of 2018 senior models but also my assistant so of course when she checked in to see if I could get her family in for our Christmas quick sessions the answer was yes! This was the first chance I’ve had to photograph the whole family and these quick sessions make it fast and easy for everyone (I mean what’s not to love, especially for the guys in the family, about a 5 minute session).

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| Loren + Zach + Bow | Christmas Quick Session |

This lovely lady was a senior client of mine a few years ago and then I got to photograph her momma’s wedding day so I was so excited when she messaged me to get a Christmas quick session set for her and Zach and Bow. And little bow was quite the model. I always have some tricks up my sleeve for pups on session but he was so easy to photograph. It was so great to see Loren again and meet these two guys too.

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| Taylor 2017 Family Portraits | Decatur IL |

I’m so excited to have seen this family again this year. Our last session was in 2014 (you can see it here)  and these guys survived a crazy COLD windy miserable day for their session then. So we were all thrilled to have their session on a, still windy, but much warmer day this year! And I cannot believe how much these kiddos have grown. They are so full of personality it was a super fun session!

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And, of course, we had to give each kiddo their own moment in the spotlight to let their personalities shine!

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Now that their Christmas cards have been sent I thought I’d update their blog post with their adorable Christmas card!

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| McCoy Family Annual Portraits | Just the Kids | Decatur IL

I’m so excited to show off this year’s annual portraits of the McCoy Family kiddos! Doing annual family portraits is seriously no joke (trust me, I know we do them too). Every year it feels like you JUST did these and it’s time again to plan for new outfits (that don’t look too much like the past ones but are still your style). Do that for 3-5 years in a row and it just gets exponentially tougher to keep things looking new and fresh.

But is it worth it? YES!!! I absolutely think so but why? For one, your kiddos do change quite a bit from year to year and it’s hard to know just when those big changes will hit and annual family portraits make sure we don’t miss a thing. We’ll catch the year your kiddo hits that big growth spurt. The year the boys finally catch up in height to the girls. The year he lost both front teeth. The awkward haircut year. The year they all of a sudden go from looking like little kids to little adults still doing Squadcopters activities (seriously it happens all of a sudden!).

I’ve been lucky enough to photograph this beautiful family annually for the past few years since Cruz was just a baby and it’s AMAZING to see how much they’ve grown. And I have to give a major shout out to Lori their momma who always makes sure to make time for this session and never fails to come up with the BEST outfit combinations.

Take a look at some of their past sessions:

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2016: http://blog.sjanephotography.com/?p=18265

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Chloe even got her own moment in the spotlight a couple years ago HERE.

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More from their Fall 2014 Family Session HERE. 

In 2013 we actually did two sessions since Cruz was so little and changing so fast. And ironically the first session was in the spring and freakishly freezing cold and their second session was in the fall and crazy warm but these guys did great despite their wardrobe and weather clashing.

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See more from their 2013 Family Sessions HERE. 

One thing that keeps me on my toes with annual sessions is the constant effort to create dynamic poses since you don’t want your portraits each year to look exactly the same. It’s fun to try to challenge myself to create new and interesting poses for these families every year.

This year, with busy schedule of very active kiddos we decided to have just the kids (plus Maverick) in the session to make things easier on mom and dad.

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| Willa | One Year Old Portraits | Decatur IL |

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There’s SO much cuteness on the blog for you today. This little angel belongs to one of my past wedding couples, Myra & Tyler. I was beyond excited to meet her and be able to create her portraits in celebration of a very big day, her first birthday! She’s absolutely the sweetest and with the biggest grin, complete with adorable nose scrunch. Hope you’ll join me in wishing her a very happy birthday!

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