Last weekend my wife asked me to do school photos for our kids.  I proceeded to ask her what she had in mind and she answered with “you’re the photographer”.  Although I agree with her that yes I am the professional photographer, I still believe that it should be a collaboration.  I wouldn’t treat any personal or family photo session any different than how I would treat my clients.  Yes I may have great ideas to bring to the table but ultimately this is your photo session and you most likely have an idea of what you want.  You bring your idea to me and together with my experience and knowledge we will bring your thoughts to life.  Take my wife for example, what she ultimately wanted was to capture the kids as they were.  She wanted pictures to hang on the wall that not only showed what they looked like this school year but their personalities and who they were as well.  Now I could have done some simple pictures with my studio backdrops like they typically do at school but that’s just plain boring.  My idea that I brought to her was to take the kids out for the morning and have some fun.  This would bring out their personalities and help them feel more comfortable when they were in front of the camera.  She loved the idea so that’s what we did.  The kids hadn’t been to Suisun City Center yet so we decided to use that as our venue.  When I got there because of the position of the sun I thought it would be perfect to use the steps as the background for the images.  I brought my studio strobe and softbox with me and decided to use it.  It worked out perfect because the strobe lit up one side of their face while bouncing of the wall and that in turn lit up the other side.  This gave an all-around even light for a much warmer picture with great skin tones.  The kids did great and had a lot of fun which made for great photos.  Make sure you visit my gallery pages to see more pictures from other sets.