When Renee (my sweet friend and talented photographer in Baton Rouge) asked me to photograph her little growing family while they were on vacation I was so darn excited because not only was I able to photograph this sweet time for them but it would be at one of my favorite places (the beach). More specifically, the beautiful Grand Hotel in Point Clear, Alabama!

The beautiful thing about family lifestyle sessions is that there aren’t any rules, except to have fun and spend lots of time together. Which is exactly what we did. We walked around the Lagoon and picked flowers, attempted to feed the ducks but they weren’t around, then made our way to the beautiful sandy beach. Sometimes during family sessions, mom is usually feeling a lot of pressure to get those perfect smiling at the camera shots. But here is the catch, when we keep telling our kids to smile “or else” threatening punishment or bribing them, they don’t light up and smile genuine smiles for us, they might grin and bear it through tears and the stress level gets higher while the end goal is falling short. However when we put less pressure on our kids and just tell them that we are going to go out for a while and hunt for butterflies, pick flowers, go for a walk, etc. While we are there make jokes, have tickle fights, races on the beach, etc. these sweet smiles come naturally, which end up being my favorite images to capture for my families. Those images also mean to most to me when I have our only family sessions done.

I think this session is a good representation of that. We set out to have an adventure and captured beautiful memories that the whole family will remember.

P.S. go follow my girl Renee Lorio Photography on Instagram!