Many parents want to remember every minute of their children's lives, and one of the best ways to do that is to take tons of pictures.
With smartphones, it's easy to capture beautiful pictures every minute of every day, but there's something special about getting professional photographs taken of your family.
When you hire a photographer, you trust that they have a vision for your photoshoot, but you also want everything to go perfectly. For one family, the Declans, their dream photoshoot would be outside in the sun, where their photographer, Elaine Baca, could capture their family before their newest addition joined them.
Because Brittany Declan was 38 weeks pregnant, their time to take photos before the birth was dwindling — but they had to keep rescheduling the photoshoot because of bad weather.
The rain in their hometown, Waxahachie, Texas, just wouldn't let up, so Elaine suggested something else instead.
[H/T Love What Matters]
The photographer, Elaine Baca of Lane B Photography, shared the story of the photoshoot on the Facebook page Love What Matters, where it quickly went viral.
Within days, the post got over 68,000 likes and over 5,600 shares. People thought the photoshoot was adorable, some people even wanted to do their own rainy photoshoots!
Elaine knew she wanted the photoshoot to be special for this family, but the weather was causing them such problems.
Elaine told LittleThings:
In Waxahachie, Texas when it rains it pours. In the weeks leading up to the maternity session, the rain was relentless.
We had rescheduled the session a couple of times already and Brittany was quickly approaching the end of her pregnancy (she was 38 weeks at the time and delivered just 9 days later), so we knew he might come any day.
With Brittany's pregnancy coming to an end, they knew they had to come up with another plan, or miss out on the photoshoot entirely.
That's when Elaine had a brilliant idea.
Elaine said:
We had been texting about the session, talking through outfits and locations, and we both saw the rain wasn’t going away.
She asked me what I thought about indoor locations, but they are outdoorsy people so I knew that wasn’t really what she wanted.
Then I suggested something a little unconventional.
They have a huge backyard which backs up to a field and I knew it had lots of muddy puddles, so I asked her what she thought about playing in the rain and ending with a mud fight.
I don’t think she even hesitated, she said she trusted my vision and wanted to go for it!
For me, photo sessions are all about preserving memories and making new ones.
Instead of just sitting outside in the sun, the family ran with the muddy puddle idea and made it a truly unique, one-of-a-kind photoshoot.
Elaine explained,
With small children it’s about remembering their ever changing personalities and quirks that make them unique.
I hope that more families consider doing documentary style sessions with little to no posing.
With two rambunctious little boys, they couldn't have asked for anything better. The whole loving family had a blast in the mud.
Elaine wrote about the wonderful family, saying:
The family is made up of Jon, Brittany, Declan (age 4), and Noah (age 2) Barton (baby Matthew was born 9 days after the photo session). They thoroughly enjoy spending time together.
Brittany stays home with the boys during the day and is one of the sweetest people I know. She takes the time to not only care for her boys, but play with them and teach them on a daily basis.
As soon as Jon walks in the door after work, you can just see the boys’ faces light up as they run to him ready to wrestle and play.
It’s so rare that I see two parents who work so well together to raise and care for their children while being so in love. They all have so much fun together.
The entire family got super messy, but they also got to take adorable photos washing off with the garden hose afterwards.
Elaine said:
With this genre of photography, parents don’t have to stress about getting their little ones to sit still and look at the camera and kids get to be kids while doing something everyone enjoys.
Every parent knows how hard it is to get their kids to sit still and smile at a camera — this is a more fun way to capture adorable candid moments!
I don't even like the outdoors that much, but I would absolutely goof around in the mud for gorgeous pictures like these.
Would you do a muddy photoshoot like this with your kids? I know I would!
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