Japan House Family and Maternity Session, University of Illinois // Urbana- Champaign, IL // Landess Family

University of Illinois Japan House Urbana- Champaign, IL

My goal at each session: try to become BFFs with the children.

Adults have learned to pretend to have a good time because they have to, that's what we learn by going through school 😂 Children don't really like being told to smile and look like they are enjoying something when they very clearly are not having a good time 😂

Some kids take no time to warm up, while others make me work for it a little more 😬 Killian and Rozalyn were those kids and that's okay! So whenever I have kiddos that don't like being told to be happy and smiley, I give them a break and let them decide what we are going to do.

the seriousness is still precious and memories to capture including snuggles!

The Landess family and I started off with some family pictures of everyone together and that still wasn't getting these kiddos to smile. And the more I pushed, the less they wanted to cooperate. So I let dad take the kiddos away to explore while I grabbed some stunning images of Baylie! 😍 When we found the kiddos, they were in much better spirits!

Watching children’s little minds explore and discover is just so awesome!

They had wandered over to the pond and were exploring that, which also included skipping rocks/throwing rocks into the pond. Perfect! That's what I like to see, so I let them do their thing and I captured what they were doing while also engaging in what they were doing so that the kiddos know that I want to see who they actually are and am not just going to "boss" them around. 😊

Another great way to get smiles out of littles!

The authentic smiles came out as we explored more and interacted more! Oh yeah, did I mention we were doing these for Baylie and Jordan's wedding anniversary? Kids really know how to steal the show 😉