Family Ties

Being a family means you are a part of something very wonderful. It means you will love and be loved for the rest of your life. No matter what.

I find that when I shoot families, I feed off of them. When they’re sarcastic I’m sarcastic too. If they’re quiet I tend to hold back my crazy. And when they’re crazy I let loose. So with this crew I was probably a crazy person. 10 kids with 10 completely different personalities. They’re like Snow White’s dwarfs, plus three more. Yes they’re all sweet, but there’s the one who is nothing but sweet, the one who is goofy, the self-assured one, the sassy one, the one who just wanted to twirl all day, the youngest who spent more time hiding from me than smiling for me. There’s the sarcastic one, the hilarious-without-trying-to-be one, the low-key one who blends in. And some combinations of the above. (And now they’re fighting over who is who).

This was my second session for this crew, this time it was to capture portraits for Sruli (child 5)’s bar mitzvah. Note the numbered ties. Yes that’s birth order. Yes that’s awesome. Amazingly enough I only needed to resort to numbers when my brain stopped working at the end of the session. Smack in the middle, Sruli has a mixture of the best of his siblings traits. He’s calm and even-tempered, yet always smiling and floats easily between the younger set as with the older set.

I left this session completely exhausted. My feet hurt from this hill (top of a parking lot) we were shooting on, my arms hurt from holding a camera to photograph 10 kids (some of whom are way taller than I’d be on a ladder), and my cheeks hurt from smiling so much. And it was worth every ache and pain.

I said it after our first session, and I’ll say it again, they make it look so easy. Clearly I can say that because I’m not the one shopping for them, or doing their laundry, but they just do this so flawlessly and with such ease. Mom and dad are constantly smiling, hugging their kids, and joking around with them. There was not one voice raised, NOT ONE ounce of stress. We can all learn from them. They were at ease together, their banter was hilarious, and every single one was thrilled to be there honoring their brother. And I guarantee this was no show. This was real, and it was awesome.