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DIY Family Photos

Every year I think, "This time I'm going to hire a professional photographer to take our family photos," and then every year I look up the prices of professional photographers in my area and very quickly change my mind!

I have nothing against professional photographers--we hired one for our wedding and I am very happy that we did! And I'm crazy jealous of people who are friends with professional photographers who give them discounts on things like family photos, don't get me wrong. The quality of those pictures is definitely miles above what I can do on my own.

In fact, we started doing our own family photos out of pure necessity--we couldn't afford it when Gunnar was in school--and then we got pretty good at it and I couldn't justify the money even when we could technically afford it, and even besides the money aspect, the cons are pretty much dealbreakers for me. Most of the photographers I've priced out have strict copyright policies, only give you 10-30 photos, and have tight schedules. The first is sucky for a blogger, the second is disappointing because I'd miss out the hilarious outtakes (see below), and the the third is really hard with how many young kids we have! (As it was we had one failed photoshoot before this one due to weather and location issues,  and we almost canceled this one because James threw up right before we were heading out the door!)

So how do we do it? A tripod, a remote shutter button, a 10 year old Nikon DLSR, and lots and lots of patience! We took over 300 photos over the course of about an hour and half to get the photos I wanted, and I still didn't manage to catch baby girl smiling. But I did get these: 

 And that's good enough for me!