| Taylor Family 2017 | Decatur IL |

I’m so excited to share another favorite SJP family with you guys today! Sticking with the Christmas week family theme it’s time for the Taylor family’s moment in the spotlight on the blog. I’ve had the chance to work with this family a couple times over the past few years for family or kiddo portraits mostly during our Limited Edition events.

This year we did a full session to spend a bit more time creating a variety of looks for them. Not only did we need some family portraits but this talented lady earned this fun Jeep this year with her company so we wanted to show it off too. So we featured the Jeep in a few family portraits as well as a promo image of her and her hubs! They even got One Sure Insurance to cover their van for them, it was such a perfect day!

Lastly, while we were at it Danielle needed a headshot for some promotions as well so we went ahead and knocked out that project too! I mean when you do the work to get all perfectly put together and get the whole family out and the car shined up we might as well do it all right?!!?

Here are their favorite images from this year’s session!

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| Taylor 2017 Family Portraits | Decatur IL |

I’m so excited to have seen this family again this year. Our last session was in 2014 (you can see it here)  and these guys survived a crazy COLD windy miserable day for their session then. So we were all thrilled to have their session on a, still windy, but much warmer day this year! And I cannot believe how much these kiddos have grown. They are so full of personality it was a super fun session!

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And, of course, we had to give each kiddo their own moment in the spotlight to let their personalities shine!

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Now that their Christmas cards have been sent I thought I’d update their blog post with their adorable Christmas card!

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| McCoy Family Annual Portraits | Just the Kids | Decatur IL

I’m so excited to show off this year’s annual portraits of the McCoy Family kiddos! Doing annual family portraits is seriously no joke (trust me, I know we do them too). Every year it feels like you JUST did these and it’s time again to plan for new outfits (that don’t look too much like the past ones but are still your style). Do that for 3-5 years in a row and it just gets exponentially tougher to keep things looking new and fresh.

But is it worth it? YES!!! I absolutely think so but why? For one, your kiddos do change quite a bit from year to year and it’s hard to know just when those big changes will hit and annual family portraits make sure we don’t miss a thing. We’ll catch the year your kiddo hits that big growth spurt. The year the boys finally catch up in height to the girls. The year he lost both front teeth. The awkward haircut year. The year they all of a sudden go from looking like little kids to little adults still doing Squadcopters activities (seriously it happens all of a sudden!).

I’ve been lucky enough to photograph this beautiful family annually for the past few years since Cruz was just a baby and it’s AMAZING to see how much they’ve grown. And I have to give a major shout out to Lori their momma who always makes sure to make time for this session and never fails to come up with the BEST outfit combinations.

Take a look at some of their past sessions:

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2016: http://blog.sjanephotography.com/?p=18265

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Chloe even got her own moment in the spotlight a couple years ago HERE.

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More from their Fall 2014 Family Session HERE. 

In 2013 we actually did two sessions since Cruz was so little and changing so fast. And ironically the first session was in the spring and freakishly freezing cold and their second session was in the fall and crazy warm but these guys did great despite their wardrobe and weather clashing.

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See more from their 2013 Family Sessions HERE. 

One thing that keeps me on my toes with annual sessions is the constant effort to create dynamic poses since you don’t want your portraits each year to look exactly the same. It’s fun to try to challenge myself to create new and interesting poses for these families every year.

This year, with busy schedule of very active kiddos we decided to have just the kids (plus Maverick) in the session to make things easier on mom and dad.

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| Willa | One Year Old Portraits | Decatur IL |

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There’s SO much cuteness on the blog for you today. This little angel belongs to one of my past wedding couples, Myra & Tyler. I was beyond excited to meet her and be able to create her portraits in celebration of a very big day, her first birthday! She’s absolutely the sweetest and with the biggest grin, complete with adorable nose scrunch. Hope you’ll join me in wishing her a very happy birthday!

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| Allen Family | Annual Family Portraits | Summer Decatur, IL |

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I’ll be missing Melanie this year as we’ve worked together for the Warrensburg-Latham High School yearbook images for years now but she’s taken a great Librarian job in another district so I won’t be seeing as much of her as usual but wish her good luck in the new job.

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I have had so much fun watching Savannah and Sophie grow up so much over the last few years. They have such unique personalities and I always look forward to what we create for them both individually and together. I sort of get excited to think about them flipping through these photos a decade or two from now seeing how much they changed every year.

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And these three were SO sweet together. This may have been the first session I jumped WHILE shooting to get that smile on the left (thank God for image stabilization!). We knew going into the session we’d have to watch for forced smiles on Ethan so I had to up the silliness just a bit and worked perfectly!

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And, of course, we had to round out the session with some individual combinations. Every family relationship is unique and I love to show not only the whole family but all the little micro relationships too.

I know this will be an exciting year for this family and I cannot wait to see them even more grown up next year!