Family Portrait Session

Collier works his magic while posing the girls.

'Sup, Fam.

As some of you guys know, we Houghs didn't send out Christmas Cards last year. Totally dropped the ball. It's not like we didn't want to, mind you, but rather we never worked out how to get decent family pictures done in our hectic schedule in the months leading up to the Holidays. And we didn't have anyone to take them.

In previous years, our friend Collier - a freelance wedding photographer - takes portraits of all the families in our extended friend group. We, like the other families involved, end up using pictures from these sessions for our annual Christmas Cards. Alas, he was otherwise occupied last year with his wedding photography crap, but this year - thank God - he was able to once again schedule a random Sunday and assign people 20-minute slots for family photos.

So, for twenty minutes this afternoon, over at Midland City Forest this time around, he took pics of me, Kris and the girls. Weather was a little overcast but otherwise good, and for a small donation of $50 he took a bunch of pictures, touched them in Adobe Lightroom, and kicked 'em back to us in a week or two.

Not a bad deal at all, folks. And now this year, once again, you will all be receiving some flashy, new Christmas Cards. So, you know. . . keep an eye out on that ol' mailbox.

Here's a few from today's session, folks - enjoy.

The Houghs, ca. 2023.

Standing in the middle of a trail, for no reason. Like we always do.

Collier's a big fan of taking 'candid' pictures of families walking in a line towards him. He says 'just talk to each other and walk towards me,' and we end up with pics like this.

The Hough Girls.

(This one seems more accurate.)

We had to coerce them into actually touching one another for these pics - they usually shove each other off.

Abby

The Cannonball

And one of us, sans kids.

On our walk back towards the parking lot - the Larsons were next on his schedule - Collier spotted this rickety, wooden fence at the top of the ol' sledding hill and had us pose behind it.

And finally, for whatever reason, our kids requested Ryan take a picture of them at the top of the sledding hill, shaking hands.  I have no idea why - kids are weird - but Collier obliged.

- Brian