Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Wordless Wednesday: Family portraits

With Grandma visiting, we went to JC Penney for Alrik's first portraits. The pictures with Grandma and the boys' aunt worked out fine. The others … were a mixed bag. I guess whenever you have a nine-month-old and a four-year-old to wrangle, it's likely someone's not being kept in line.


Alrik usually mugs for the camera, but the big lights and competing puppet waving was overwhelming for a little guy.


This was pretty cute, though.


Well, my son may have no lips, but this one's a keeper.


This is funny, at least. I should point out that Mikko was in tears over the fact that we were taking pictures that didn't include him … but then he refused for awhile to come over to do the sibling pictures. I tried to point out he's had four years of photos alone, but he was not appeased.


How are they already posing like sullen teenagers who can't stand each other?


One of them's happy. Good enough?


Well, I guess. I keep coveting proper portrait lights and backdrops that we could set up at home, because I know we could get better expressions out of them!


There weren't many to choose from for the family picture. Alrik never smiled. Mikko was actually a champ, but I wish they'd given us some feedback that his hair needed brushing. I have huge zits, huzzah, which will show up fabulously on the 8x10. And Sam kept doing this weird squinty thing with his eyes. Maybe eye drops next time?

Guess we'll be making a return trip to JCP soon to retake some of these! Please tell me I'm not the only one who has trouble getting a whole family looking good at one time.




You'll also love this week's photos on the topic of Kids and Activism over at Natural Parents Network. (Ha, that makes my post seem even more frivolous!)

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20 comments:

Run DMT said...

Those are precious! Family portraits are never easy, but you got some keepers there.

Farmer's Daughter said...

How adorable! I love the whole family together. Now I'm thinking it's time for us to get family pics done.

Good Girl Gone Green said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Good Girl Gone Green said...

Handsome little guys! And beautiful family picture, Lauren! Really pretty! :) :)

Terri said...

Precious! We have NO family photos! Seriously zero with all four of us so your efforts are amazing to me!

Shannon said...

How sad for Mikko that his plans to photobomb didn't work out. I think the photos turned out great.

Unknown said...

I think they turned out great, Lauren! And the family photo is so sweet--I don't think you have anything to worry about. I really wish we had more photographs of the whole family together (and of just me and Daniel, though I'm usually the one behind the camera). I guess it's time to get a nicer camera and a remote control. =/

Unknown said...

I think they cam out pretty well. And what is UP with the stupid puppet? Can't they tell some kids don't want to be patronized? ;-) The Future Sullen Teenagers is my favorite.

Heather Swartz said...

I liked all your pictures. We usually just take our pictures at home since my hubby has a professional grade camera and is a wiz on Photoshop. Even with it just being the two of us and my almost two year old son its a challenge for a good family picture. My son is determined to see the preview of the picture in between each shot and doesn't like sitting still for the few seconds between my hitting the button and the camera taking it (the delay is so I can be in the picture too). As far as the zit in the family pictures, I am really surprised that JCPenny's didnt touch those up. Zits are really easy to get rid of digitally.

Lindsay said...

So cute! we have some hilarious pouty pictures of my brothers and I from the 80's, lol, but so far we've had amazing luck with getting great pics of our son that look like he should be a baby Gap model. We haven't done any in a while though because I foolishly cut off his baby curls and his hair now wants to go one direction in the front and the other direction in the back (yay two cowlicks!)and without curls to naturally tumble different directions, it just looks unkempt.

I Thought I Knew Mama said...

Some of these are so cute and some are so funny! My mom has been begging me to get some portraits done of Baby. Maybe I'll try it and post a similar WW soon ;-)

Lauren Wayne said...

@Amy @ Anktangle: Well, you know I'd love to take some pictures of you guys in natural light! But if you want some regular, cheap, indoor portraits, JCP is nice for that. They always have coupons for no sitting fees & ~$4 sheets (1 8x10, 2 5x7s, 8 wallets, etc.), and they show them to you on the computer right after so you can order. It's worth a shot. However, with Daniel's SPD, I don't know how he'll react to the lights and attention. Mikko's always been very sensitive to it all, though once he's warmed up we've been able to get cute pictures.

The problem this time is they wouldn't let our kids warm up, because they have a strict frame limit (why??) and wanted to get all the poses in we asked for (including grandma & aunt, which I didn't post here). Oh, well.

Lauren Wayne said...

@Jennifer: Totally! And we had far too many other people with us. I was trying to get him to smile, so then Sam AND Natalie AND Mikko thought that was their job, too. Poor baby had no idea where to look.

Lauren Wayne said...

@Heather Swartz: We got some nice ones on the beach when we hadn't lost our tripod and remote control. :P (Mikko buried it in the sand, I kid you not.) But our parents tend to consider our pictures not "real." I think if we had the backdrop and the lights, we'd be in action!

Sam and I have Photoshopped heads from different photos onto other ones so that everyone's looking pleasant, but JCP won't do anything like that, sigh. I'm shocked as well that they don't have any basic airbrushing feature. I'd totally pay for it. Then again, my ILs once paid for airbrushing at some Olan Mills place, and it was hilariously awful, like a sandblast. Maybe I should get a skintone sticker and put it over it!

Lauren Wayne said...

@Crunchy Con Mommy: Baby curls are the best! I was terrified to give Mikko a haircut before this session, because he has about 14 cowlicks and you just never know…

Lauren Wayne said...

Thanks, all! I think my biggest problem is that they're not even hilariously awful; they're just … fine. ;) I'd be so much happier if they were funny! I didn't even post the one of all of us looking down at Alrik, only he's squirming to look away, and all I can see when I look at that one is straight down my shirt!

There were just so many of them that didn't look right to us, but that's ok — we got the grandma/aunt shots those two ladies really wanted, so now we can go back with a smaller group and try again for shots of the boys. I'll even let Mikko pose alone first this time! :)

Rachael said...

I can't get over how grown-up Mikko looks. My goodness!

Shana said...

Cute! We went to get portraits of my boys at JCP recently too. The 4 month old skipped his nap and I almost rescheduled. He actually did well for the sibling shots but by the time his individual pictures were taken he was *done* and it was hard to get a good one of him solo. I did not even think about trying to get a full family portrait. (shudders)

Inder-ific said...

These turned out pretty well, really, but I think I prefer the candid shots you guys take on the beach. That's just me, though. I just really like real life photography. :-)

(My husband's a photographer, but he shudders at the thought of multiple kid portraits because getting two kids to smile on cue is like herding cats. A lot of photographers will photoshop different heads together to get a portrait where everyone is smiling, but there's usually something "not quite right" about those portraits, too. The parent can tell. It's hard!)

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