Hurley Gardens, Wheaton, IL Family Photographer | Angelo, Emilie, Nicholas, & Alina

Hurley Gardens, Wheaton, IL Family Photographer

Last month I got to wander around Hurley Gardens with this sweet family! When we met it was also the week before Alina’s 1st birthday, so we grabbed some 1-year-old photos as well!

One thing I love about shoots with very young kids is that it’s the perfect opportunity to embrace chaos and real life. You can try all you want, but young kids are just going to do what they want, when they want. They haven’t yet learned to fake it for pictures and their emotions are just right there on their faces. It’s such a beautiful and fleeting time. The photographer side of me loves to photograph this stage, while, at the same time, the parent side of me fully appreciates how difficult and frustrating it can be…After all, that independence and lack of self control isn’t just contained to a photo shoot and I get it 100%. My “about me” page is full of images I’ve taken of my children that have special meaning, and a good majority of them aren’t what you’d consider perfect. There’s crying and attitude and pouting all mixed in with laughter and joy and I treasure every single image. Capturing that same gamut of emotions for my clients is always my biggest goal, and if you’ve been around here for any amount of time you know that I share more than just the happy smiley images.

Now that I’ve gotten that tangent out of my system (it has to happen every couple of months or I self-destruct, lol), here are some of my favorites of my family shoot with Angelo & Emilie and there two darling children Nicholas & Alina!!