So you know when you make some grand plans for things and then a curve ball hits and you just say “Forget it, let’s go to Geer Street Garden?” I feel like the above sentence has been said and acted upon by myself and Geoff several times, but not during a session until now! :D Magnus is an intelligent and energetic 3.5 year old who loves slides. LOVES SLIDES. And we were going to take pictures at the Central Park playground, around the Geer Street area murals, and hit up Cocoa Cinnamon. But Magnus LOVES SLIDES. HE REALLY LOVES THEM. And as most of you know, when you try to redirect a 3.5 year old from something they truly love, it just doesn’t always happen. We were, however, able to redirect him towards snacks. And so that’s how Catherine, Mike, Magnus, and Rush the Dog (who is incredibly handsome and stoic, just like Catherine described him to me) found themselves at Geer Street Garden with me, hanging out on the back patio and chilling. Magnus ran around and talked about superheroes, Rush the Dog got some belly rubs, Catherine and Mike got some fries, and all was right with the world. So happy to have had the opportunity to work with this sweet family!

Are my fellow American blog readers prepared to feel really inadequate when it comes to the number of languages you speak? Good! You’ve come to the right place. Meei contacted us a while back to do a family session with her husband and two daughters. They love the age of their girls and wanted to get it documented (and we agree; 1 and 3 are super fun ages!). We knew that Meei is Chinese, and we knew we’d have about a 5% chance of pronouncing her full name correctly, but she was super nice about our American handicap and told us to call her May. We also knew that her husband’s name was William, so we were 100% confident in our ability to pronounce his name (we were right!). But what we didn’t know is that William is actually Dominican! And William speaks Spanish and Meei speaks Chinese! They met while they were living in New York and they speak English to each other! And William speaks Spanish to the kids and Meei speaks Chinese to the kids and the kids respond in Spanish to their dad and Chinese to their mom and English at school and I’m sorry for all the exclamation points but this is so impressive to an American who took 6 years of French class and forgot everything! Holy smokes. We were and continue to be incredibly impressed by these trilingual kids and their parents. Such a cool family. The best part of our job is meeting people from all over the world and hearing about their experiences. So glad this family got to be our clients this year!

It’s always such a great experience being invited into clients’ homes to photograph their family being themselves. I love seeing all the different houses and decorating styles, for one, but I also love seeing the different interactions between families. Every family is different, and our job photographing them is never the same twice. This family featured two beautiful little girls (one a little more vivacious, the other a little more serious) who enjoyed showing us their collections of stuffed bunnies, climbing in their treehouse and in their living room, jumping on their trampoline, skipping rope, and putting on their mother’s high heels. They are energetic, independent, and intelligent, and we just tried to keep up. :) Mom and Dad were super welcoming to us and were really interested in having all the different facets of their family documented due to Mom’s background in journalism, and we were happy to oblige. We had an awesome time meeting this fantastic family of four!

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