Family photos from our annual beach trip

Every year since I can remember, my entire family goes on a beach trip together in May — my parents, grandparents, brother and sister in law and their kids, and Brad and me and our kids. We usually go the week of Mother’s Day and celebrate my mom and husband’s birthdays because their birthdays usually fall on Mother’s Day or the day after. Talk about spreadin the love! 🙂 It’s a great week to go because it’s not crowded or hot yet. However, now that our oldest children are getting older and in big school our May trips are coming to a close. Hopefully we’ll still have our annual trip together, but go right after school gets out instead.

One of the things we do each year is take family pictures to update on the walls, and for some reason every year I forget to think about what my own family will be wearing until we get down there! I’m usually behind the camera so it doesn’t matter what I’m wearing and it just doesn’t cross my mind. Our family photo session often comes down to a night when everyone has stayed out on the beach or golfing til the last minute and we all rush inside to shower and get the shots before the sun goes down. Everyone is tired and hungry (especially the kids) and it quickly turns into me feeling rushed because everyone gets cranky and ready for dinner! My own family is the worst to shoot because they’ve all been my test subjects and experiments for way too long! Bless them! 🙂 My dad was cute and trying to relax everyone by walking around with his phone on his belt playing jazz music while we shot.

The funniest part about our family sessions at the beach is that I have to set up the camera on my tripod and use those precious 10 seconds I have on the timer to run into the picture before the shutter releases. After a few sprints in and out of pictures (in high wedge shoes) I am pretty much a mess from the humidity and ready to call it quits myself. We are also standing there wondering what kind of expressions our kids have while they stare at the blinking red light! Did I mention my camera mounted on my tripod was standing alone in the street while I was in the photo? The whole time I’m hoping and praying that a car would see it and not hit it. Thank goodness we were on a quiet street in Seaside. So, after giving you the background, I’m sure you can understand why our overall perspective on our own family beach pictures is, “We get what we get”. Definitely NOT the same approach I have with my clients!

Now that I’ve given you the comical “behind the scenes”, here are some of the images. After it’s all said and done it’s worth the effort to have some shots of all of us together, especially since there are so many generations represented. I’ll share some candids from our trip later.