Organization and Patience are the Keys

Recently I had the pleasure of working on a family portrait session for my friends Deanna & Kevin and their son, Nathan. When Deanna first mentioned doing a portrait at her beautiful farm in WI, I thought...sure, this will be easy. Then she mentioned she wanted not only Kevin, Nathan, and herself in the picture, but her 3 horses and Nathan riding his pony. YIKES! As a photographer I have quickly learned just how difficult it is to get ONE person and ONE horse both looking at the camera, smiling, and ears pointed forward. How in the world was I going to accomplish this with 4 horses, 2 adults, and an active energetic 6 year-old?

Let me tell you - patience. And lots and lots of patience. Did I mention patience?

I should have known that my uber-organized friend Deanna would have everything under control. When I arrived, she was putting bridles on all three horses, and had invited two friends along to help control the chaos and handle horses. She had Kevin & Nathan dressed & ready to go, and everyone marched out to the back fence of her large pasture for the photos. Deanna had thought of every detail, from bringing a towel to wipe horse noses to having one of her friends shaking a coffee can full of sugar cubes to get everyone's ears up.

Here is a fun picture of her army of helpers in action while we walked out to the pasture!



It took many many shots to get the "winner". In so many photos, there was maybe just one thing happening that would throw off the shot, or sometimes, many things at once. Let me give you a quick synapsis of what was happening in the below picture. George (far left) was about ready to bite Boo (2nd from left) while Deanna is backed up into shadow and laughing because their naughty dog ran into the picture, while Kevin is also now looking down at the errant dog, and good boy Nathan is smiling pretty for the camera.


After a lot of time and patience, the stars were finally aligned with mars and I managed to get the below image, my absolute favorite from the session!



Here are a few more of my "favs" from this fun family session! Enjoy!