As my family lives as missionaries in Guatemala, it had been at least three years since I had seen them, so I shouldn't have been surprised when the girls had grown about a foot each. At 5'6" I'm not entirely vertically challenged, but I must say it is a bit disconcerting when your cousin six years your junior towers over you. It also makes it a bit difficult to take flattering photos since I prefer to shoot from a level or high angle. Thank goodness for foot stools!

Although I had initially picked out some nice spots around town to take our photos - a mountaintop for a picnic, the flowers of the Arboretum, perhaps a playground - the impending rain (and desire for lunch) made us rethink that decision and instead simply take photos around the house.  To be honest, I much prefer this for family photos as the comfort of home often leads to much more relaxed, flattering and authentic images. 

The most difficult part of a family shoot is making sure to take each grouping in equal measure, i.e. to make sure each girl got a photo with each parent, a couple images by herself, and then a few in various other groupings. The beauty of it is the variety of groupings and poses lend themselves wonderfully to photo albums: each girl got a page with her parents and then one all to herself. (See the video preview here.) Perhaps life isn't fair, but fairness in family photo albums is a must!

In between the bigger group shots and individual photos we paused for lunch and games, the latter of which proved a fun time for candid images. An enlightening moment too; if ever I'm at a complete loss as to how to get people to look like they're having fun for photos (and actually HAVE fun in the process), I'll know to pull out my Catch Phrase app. 

Even though the sun shone brightly the whole shoot - despite the earlier hint of storm - I'd bought a brightly-colored umbrella for this special occasion so we made good use of the prop. In my opinion, these are some of the cutest photos of the shoot because of the whimsical posing. 

Finally, my most favorite image from our afternoon was that of the girls reading a book on the couch, an activity the whole family enjoys. I'd had an idea to set up a flash to illuminate the book and reflect to their faces, giving the illusion that the book itself was giving off rays of knowledge and to my great pleasure the image turned out how I'd planned.  

This has to be one of my favorite family photo shoots to date. A variety of backgrounds, colorful scarves, both posed and candid images, a polka dotted umbrella, showing off the family's hobbies, what's not to like!