Despite a couple of false starts due to the unpredictable Spring weather in Colorado, I recently took photos of a friend of mine and her family. After doing some location scouting, I proposed we do the shoot at Willow Farm Park in Longmont, CO. The park itself is relatively new yet has a nice stream going through it which provides some nice big trees as a backdrop and plenty of open space for a variety of different scenes to use as a backdrop.

This was my first family portrait session and I couldn’t have had a better family to start with! Without me giving them any instructions upfront, they brought along a blanket to lay on and several toys and props to use which were perfect for the shoot. Olive was a trooper and lasted almost two hours during the shoot. I was really glad to work with them, and as you can see the results are great! I learned a lot from my time with them and had a blast, and really like how the photos turned-out.

It was hard to choose some favorites to post because there are so many great photos, but here are several that I really liked:

About a year ago, I took my first portraits at Denver Darkroom. I barely knew what I was doing at the time when shooting my camera in manual mode, but I was pretty impressed with how my photos turned out. I don’t think I’ll ever be hugely into portraits and shooting models, but I think my shots come out okay when I do.

You can view more of the portraits from this class here.