best family photos – Page 2

February 15, 2018February 15, 2018

| Klemm Family Portraits | Decatur IL |

I’ve so loved working with this family over the past year or so. We started with Evan’s senior portraits and then wanted to create some family portraits for Dave and Linda before they are empty nesters. And since we’d created a wall collage with Evan’s portraits we took a bit of time at their family session to take a variety of images of his sister Sara so we could give her a wall collage of her own too!

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We ended up designing a complete collage combining the below image as their feature ‘anchor’ piece in the center with a collage of the kids on each side. My favorite part about creating wall art with the ‘kids’ at this age is that these can hang for YEARS to come without the need to update as they are the last portraits of the family together before the kids branch out on their own and start their own lives/families. They’ll be your kids forever and this is our chance to freeze this moment with them to enjoy in your home even when they aren’t there any longer!

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See more on our IG and Facebook pages!

December 28, 2017January 8, 2018

| Taylor Family 2017 | Decatur IL |

I’m so excited to share another favorite SJP family with you guys today! Sticking with the Christmas week family theme it’s time for the Taylor family’s moment in the spotlight on the blog. I’ve had the chance to work with this family a couple times over the past few years for family or kiddo portraits mostly during our Limited Edition events.

This year we did a full session to spend a bit more time creating a variety of looks for them. Not only did we need some family portraits but this talented lady earned this fun Jeep this year with her company so we wanted to show it off too. So we featured the Jeep in a few family portraits as well as a promo image of her and her hubs! They even got One Sure Insurance to cover their van for them, it was such a perfect day!

Lastly, while we were at it Danielle needed a headshot for some promotions as well so we went ahead and knocked out that project too! I mean when you do the work to get all perfectly put together and get the whole family out and the car shined up we might as well do it all right?!!?

Here are their favorite images from this year’s session!

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November 7, 2017April 8, 2018

| 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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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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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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January 12, 2017January 10, 2017

| Smith Family Portraits | Decatur IL Limited Edition Sessions | Sarah Jane Photography |

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It’s time to show off the Smith family today! We fit this gorgeous family into an EARLY morning Limited Edition session this fall and I’m so glad we did. We were working to find time to fit them in before a day full of activities/games and it came together perfectly with this beautiful sunrise light.

While I loved this session, I’m most excited about how this family decided to display their images! This was the first time this family had worked with us and Aimee was excited to not only have professional images created but also to display them in their home. She came in with a number of wall images so we could design something perfect for their space (one that already featured a gorgeous shabby chic door hung right on their wall – real statement piece!). While she wasn’t opposed to moving that large piece to replace it with a portrait similar in size (60″ +) we instead decided to design with it in mind and create a smaller series of images that could be hung together or moved around as they like.

Doing a number of canvases also allowed us to feature each of the kids’ favorite portraits of themselves and a couple different family poses for different spaces in the house.

By far my favorite thing to create for families are their personal home galleries! We wake up to 3 of our wedding images each day, and walk down stairs past 60 inches of portraits of ourselves (which will soon be growing with the addition of at least 5 new wall art pieces in our gallery to show off BabyB). And while writing this it seems a bit narcissistic, in reality it doesn’t feel that way at all. It instead fills my heart with love and joy for my family each day when I get to see us happy, loving and together on our walls. And the best part is little BabyB points and says ‘mommy, daddy, bear, lily’ when she sees them too!

Full family sessions are often tough to fit into your busy schedules (I know, scheduling acrobatics is a bit part of my job!) but imagine what we can create for your family and for your home with just 15/30 minutes… just a single Limited Edition in 2017 could add a little love and light to your home and I’d love to be a part of creating that for you.

Booking is open NOW for our 2017 Limited Edition Session dates and full sessions are already filling fast (sunset spaces in for fall especially!). You can book your Limited Edition Session right HERE right NOW!