It’s the curse of all photographers – as much as we care about memories, and preserving special moments, and sharing beautiful images with the world, we are rarely in photographs. At least that’s the case with me. I’m always behind the camera. Well, this weekend I invited my mom, dad and sister over to the house to take some family photos. The four of us haven’t had a family photo together in a really long time. So long, in fact, that the memory I have of that day is fragmented and faded. It was time. My husband showed up at the end to grab some shots, but for pretty much the entire shoot, it was me, my camera, my flash, and the tripod.

For those of you interested in the technical aspect of the shoot, I set my camera up with my 24-70mm lens fully zoomed to 70mm. I wanted to make sure we were all in focus, and since I wasn’t going to be behind the camera to compensate for movement, I set the f-stop to between f7.1 and f8. That gave plenty of room for if we took any small steps forward or backward. I also took several test shots of my mom, dad and sister to adjust the shutter speed and set up my fill flash on remote before I tried to get in the picture.

Once all that was set up, I set the timer to approximately 10 seconds to give me enough time to join my family and smile, and pressed the shutter. The photos below are the result of that. I’m so happy with how they came out! I love my family.

My dad brought his camera with him, too, and got a few shots of me preparing the camera:

And of course, there was some playing around:

I love this shot below: 

This shot is so cute! We were standing beside my mom, then all of a sudden we stepped behind her in a line – she didn’t know where we had gone! 🙂

I love this photo, except for the coats! LOL. It was super cold, and especially windy, so any time I was setting up another shot, the coats went back on. In the shots without the coats on, they are on the grass just outside of the frame. 🙂 We decided our next shoot will be in the spring. 🙂

Otman arrived late, but I still had my tripod set up for a sweet shot of the  both of us. 

My sister took the one below with my dad’s camera:

I had to take some individual shots of us, too! I think these are so cute with the sunlight behind us. The pictures just seem so them. I love them.

Thanks for taking my photo, Dad!

Until next time…. I think my New Year’s Resolution will be to be in more photos myself. 🙂

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South Carolina Wedding Photographer, Portrait Photographer and Boudoir Photographer
For more creative and interesting photography, please visit http://www.stephaniesnyderphotography.com!