The most fun evening ever. Here is me, running up to this family with Beiber bumping in my back pocket, carrying multiple blankets, already cracking jokes. The kids are shy at first but start to warm up right away. First thing I run down into the trails, telling the kids to keep up, and set up a quick family grouping and sibling shots, and that was fast and easy.20160516-arroyo-grande-family-photography-best-family-photographer-sunset-central-coast-california-portrait 20160516-arroyo-grande-family-photography-best-family-photographer-sunset-teens-teenagers

Then we start laughing about how awkward everything is, I am trying not to trip over branches as I lead them up the hill to put them into the grass, where my car key sneaks out of my pocket while I am on my stomach trying to get the perfect shot. It’s fine, we find it later. I’ve never done that in years of shooting at that location, so turns out I can make a perfectly workable, organized system go wrong for no reason. Awesome.

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I asked their youngest, sweet Aaron with the amazing endless eyes, to do some ninja kicks for me and got some amazing shots of his face, so proud of himself. I told them to tell stories about each other, give each other piggy back rides. I told the husband to hold his wife’s face and tell her naughty things to make her laugh. Hahaha that is probably the most fun thing to do, we just end up laughing like crazy about it and then later those images look intensely romantic. Something about simply looking into your partner’s eyes translates romance into photographs. It’s a beautiful thing to uncover later, like unwrapping a gift.

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I also love seeing how the sun splashes across the photographs when I pull them into my editing programs and I can’t really see that during the shoot. It’s so exciting to digitally enhance the sunset and watch it set the whole image on fire! I love sunset shoots, they are always magical.

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