Lifestyle Photography: capture real life.

Lifestyle photography offers a fresh perspective in capturing your family. The concept is to document moments that are in a natural setting for your family-- things you actually do together on a regular basis; to essentially capture the way you live. It makes perfect sense to me to document those perfect, simple moments with photography since with those images you're capturing real memories too. After we added little Miss E to the family, I knew I wanted to capture some of the precious moments we shared when she was brand new, so I called on the amazing Lindsey of Lindsey Orton Photography (she's also the one who took all the lovely shots of the nursery).Having a 2 year old of course makes things a bit crazy, but with lifestyle photography you actually want to capture all the crazy, so it's kind of awesome in that way too. You don't have to stress about trying to perfectly pose those busy little bodies! You can just let your children be themselves. For instance, my little boy loves to wear ties. He will wear a tie with pajamas even-- just one of those quirky things. During our photo session he wanted to wear a tie, even though we had previously decided against him wearing one for the photos. We let him. Now every time I see one of the photos with his crookedly clipped on tie (since he had to do it himself) I smile. That is him. That is who he is & what he does at this lovely moment in time and now I always get to remember that.We did a simple little session in "mom & dad's room" since it's a place we all like to snuggle up together as a family & read a good book (like Go-Go Doggie, as my son calls it). This simple idea worked great for us, but there are so many great options and the key is finding the perfect one for YOUR family. I thought this list of ideas I put together might help get your mind going on some concepts that might work perfectly for you & yours...

• Baking cookies together (or any other treat you love to make with your kids)
• Painting/coloring together
• Playing with toys (building legos together, playing dolls, etc)
• Playing at the park (not all lifestyle photography needs to be in your home, any setting that fits within your weekly routine is great too)
• Walking the dog (a good way to capture the neighborhood you live in)
• Playing in the backyard (on the swingset, with a ball, in the sandbox...)
• Jumping on the bed (if this is something that's allowed in your house! We sure do it.)
• Building a pillow fort
• Baby Bath Time

So without further ado, I'll share these lovely images and let the pictures do the talking. A few precious & sweet moments frozen in time...