O and his mom are from out of state and they came up to visit so I could do his 2-year-old portraits. He sure gave me a run for my money. It’s really not easy to do studio shots with a 2-year-old because they just want to be free! After some running around, he finally sat for a few seconds in between to let me capture a few shots!

As I processed the pictures I took today for Bella’s 2-year portraits, I became overwhelmed by emotions. I look at these pictures and realize that she is no longer the baby we took home 2 years ago or the toddler that has been running our house since she could walk. She’s now a little girl who likes to dress up and wear her pearl necklace and bracelet. I was afraid that she was not going to cooperate for pictures like so many kids her age. However, I was pleasantly surprised that she was excited to get dressed up, put on her jewelry, and take pictures. When taking pics at this age, it’s important to remember that bribery is a powerful tool! She loves wearing her necklace so much that simply threatening to take it off if she didn’t sit worked like a charm. Getting her to actually look at the camera was a whole other issue!

My two nieces are school aged (pre-school and grade school) and I took the opportunity to take some Valentine’s Day pictures of them to create little personalized vday cards for them. We also took this time to take pics of them with Bella, which was a bit of a daunting task! Bella just wanted to play and tackle them. I finally got a great shot of the three of them (the first decent picture of the 3 ever) because the older girls had to block her from knocking them over. People often think that taking portraits is easy. You take a good camera, and you just press a button. It’s not even the technical aspects that make it so much harder than that. It’s the psychology of figuring out how to get an active toddler to listen and actually sit or stand still for even a split second!