This is the 3rd time I’ve photographed this family and mom always does such a wonderful job styling her entire family.  The colors go great together AND there’s pattern — multiple patterns.  How does it all work?  First, the patterns are small and not overpowering.  Big brother’s shirt is the piece that ties everyone together.  Mom pulled all the colors from that shirt — everyone is wearing one of those “signature” colors.  Coordinated, but not matching — my favorite combination!

Coordinated, but not matching

One very important thing to remember when choosing outfits for a family session is making sure that small grouping of the family work well too.  In this case, the entire family looked great (see above) AND the kids look great together in a group.  Its a fun picture!

The next one is a small family group — 3 people and their dog — but I love that they don’t match and still look great together.  The Pop of red is my favorite part.  Its classic and fun at the same time.  The other thing I want to note here is background color.  Most of my sessions are done outside, in a park, so the dominant color is green.  Picking clothing colors that play off the green is important.  The red & blue in this group pops nicely from the green background.

This next set is an extended family session: grandparents + 3 sets of families.  I know it seems overwhelming to try to pick out outfits for a large group like this.  But, instead of going with a uniform, the group went for one of my favorite combinations for extended families: different shades of blue.  Blue is easy to find, looks good on most people and always looks good in photos.

And, again, this group needed to consider what smaller groupings would look like because while the large family photo was important, so was each individual family and each grouping of kids.

And, finally, one of the more dynamic and colorful groups I’ve photographed.  Whomever planned this groups outfits has a fantastic sense of style.  Again, notice that there are some patterns mixed in with the solids AND the patterns contain the colors found in the entire group.  Remember, coordinated, but not matching.

And, again, when you do a smaller subset of the group, they still look great!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the beautiful mamas out there.  I truly love capturing the relationship between mother & child during my sessions.  It always ends up being one of my favorite photos.  I’ve put together a slideshow of some of my favorite images from recent (and a couple of favorites from all-time.)  If you find yourself in this slideshow, go on over to my Facebook page and tag yourself so you can share this mother’s day greeting with all your friends!

View Mother’s Day Slideshow Here.

As you can imagine, after 3 years, I have a large number of images.  Not all of the photos have been edited, printed or even shared.  I’m happy that I have them, and its a fun surprise to go back into the folders after some time and find new gems.  I was doing that this afternoon and stumbled on many new favorites, which I thought I’d share with you.  I’ll continue to do that from time to time because I know its important for my clients to know me as someone other than the person behind the camera.

All of these were taken last year.  Some are almost a year old at this point.  But, I still love them.

Interested in this offer?  Email me at karenleslie@mac.com, reply to this post, or call me at 407.340.8088.

I would LOVE to see you again!

We captured lots of this:

Some of this:

And plenty of this: