A Real Life Family Session with the Hettichs | Buffalo and WNY Documentary Family Photographer

It's that time of year again! Time where parents are sending their children off to school, and the time of year where everything begins to transition from carefree, summer living days to holy smokes there's so much to do before the holidays. I'm always amazed and stunned when fall rolls back around again. Like, seriously, wasn't it just the beginning of spring only last month?!

If you're a parent of a young child, I'm sure these thoughts of how fast time goes by are with you every day, especially during milestones like first days of school, birthdays, and holidays. One minute your child depends on you for everything, then they're crawling, and then they're having conversations with their best friends and acting like they don't need you anymore (don't worry, they'll always need you)! These are all inevitable changes, and it's so exciting to experience and cherish each new stage of any child's life. This is why I love (so, so much) to provide my clients with images that reflect their real, everyday lives together as a family. Images that tell a story of what routines took place, what type of food or toys were a child's favorite, or what caused them to laugh uncontrollably or cry in instant. All these little things that you'll take with you in your memory, but that may not always be documented in photographs (with you in them!) and passed on to your child as they get older.

Back in June, I had the amazing opportunity to photograph past wedding clients, the Hettichs, with their (at that time) soon-to-be-turning one year old daughter. I hope one day when she's older, they look back on these photos together as a family and tell her stories of how she used to walk around carrying her book of important faces and names, giving kisses to the pages, or how she used to try and eat clumps of sand from her sandbox, or even how she loved being pushed in her swing – except on this hot day when she really only wanted to splash in the water. Most of all, I hope she sees how much she has always been loved, and I hope that they still see in her the same young, carefree, and happy daughter they've had since day one.

Oh, the Hettich family, I send you all giant hugs today and can't wait until we see each other again! Here are a few of my favorites for remicising on.

Are you interested in setting up
a Real Life family session of your own?

From now until the end of the year, I will have 4 spots remaining for in-home documentary Real Life family sessions. For these next 4 families who book a Real Life session with me before the end of 2017, I will be including a complimentary 11x14 print for you to hang proudly on your wall, or gift to a family member for the holidays. If you think you might be interested, please don't hesitate to inquire with me and book your session today! Sessions are only $350 for 2 hours of in-home coverage and include the final, high res digital images.

Not interested in a real life session, but looking for family portraits before the holidays? This fall I will be offering 1 day of family session minis, with spots available for up to 6 families. Details to be announced next week, so stay tuned by following me on Facebook (facebook.com/dawnmgibsonphotography) or Instagram (@dawnmgibson_photo).

Buffalo and Rochester Documentary Family Photography | The Achatz Family Real Life Session

I just need to start off by saying how much this session holds a special place in my heart. Kari is not only an amazing wife and mother, but she's an inspirational woman all around, a phenomenal art teacher and photographer as well. We have known each other since college, and her daughter, Isabella, was one of the very first newborns I ever photographed. Since that day, I have had the pleasure of photographing Kari, Adam, and Isabella on several different occasions for their family portraits. But it's been a little while since I saw them last, and when I walked into their home with Isabella greeting me at the door with the biggest hug, I could have cried buckets of tears.

Where has the time gone, I thought? Since the day she was a newborn and even since the last time I saw them, it feels like it's only been a year at most. Yet someone now Isabella is this little person with a wild imagination of her own, a beautiful singing voice, and has a heart filled with so much compassion it pours out of her. These personality traits of a child are not always things I am able to see on a traditional family portrait shoot and that is why I love, love, love and firmly believe in Real Life documentary family sessions. Instead of being out at a park taking portraits for 60ish minutes, Real Life sessions give me the opportunity to spend time with families, photographing them in their home, doing what they love and do together all the time. For this session, it meant documenting Kari and Isabella baking cupcakes and playing dress up; Adam and Isabella putting together Legos; and time together with Isabella reading to her parents, all the while naturally interacting, enjoying the comfort of their own home. These are the memories I long to preserve in photographs.

But do you want to know something else I loved about this session? At one point not long after I arrived to their house last Friday, Kari said to me how excited she was to have photos around the house with HER actually in them, and how she always has these amazing photos of Isabella and Adam, or beautiful photos of everyone else with Isabella, but that she really doesn't have a lot of photos with her in them, especially photos of the everyday moments like this. It was sort of interesting that she said that, because she's not the first mom to tell me that. Two other moms have mentioned that to me in the last few months alone, and just a few days ago, another mom I know made a post on facebook sharing this link to an article about this very same topic. I could go on about this, but I'm just going to leave it at this (with a little shameless plug): taking photos of parents with their kids (mom especially) is a primary focus during all of my sessions, and there is no better way to capture the genuine real life moments than through a session like this.

So if you're still trying to think of the perfect Mother's Day gift, consider a gift certificate for a Real Life family session (I will have several available for purchase during the next 2 weeks)! Because having photographs of moments like this to look back on in 10, 20, 30+ years from now will mean the world not only to mom, but to everyone in the family.

The Bond Family's Real Life Family Session | WNY Documentary Family Photography

I'm all sorts of obsessed with documenting everyday moments of families in their homes, or as I call them, Real Life family sessions. And it brings me even greater joy when those sessions are with past wedding clients. These are the images that make my soul sing, and that make me squeal with joy and sometimes even tear up with all sorts of emotions of the tiniest yet most significant thing I know I'm documenting. These are the moments I want my clients to pass down for generations, and that I know will fill their hearts with so much joy for having images like this to show their children one day.

And with that said, I'm just going to dive right into the Real Life session I had with the Bond family last week. One thing to note... during this session, Maria and I discussed our obsession with all things white, black, and grey. So I make no apologies that this post is mostly black and white images because I know at least Maria would understand the pull black and white has on me, even in images!