Think Portrait Innovations for family pictures this fall

Did you read my post last month about our awesome photo sitting at Portrait Innovations and have been meaning to make an appointment? Do it now, seriously. Trust me when I say that the holidays will sneak up on you and before you know it you will be ordering holiday cards wondering why you don't have one single picture of your family with everyone smiling {nicely} at the camera with their eyes open. I know this because that was me last year, and the year before, and the year before…

But not this year, because I thought ahead and scheduled a fall sitting at Portrait Innovations that gave me lots of pictures to choose from when it comes time to order holiday gifts, prints to frame, and finally, holiday cards. The family photo shoot was easy, it was professional, but most of all it was actually fun. Yeah, I said fun. With three kids under 7 you rarely hear the words "fun" and "photo shoot" in the same sentence, but it was surprisingly enjoyable and the pictures really speak for themselves about what kind of shoot it was.

We got everything I really was hoping for – a few full-family shots, individual shots of the kids, all three kids together – as well as some really fun ones I didn't even know I wanted. And, with all the different background choices and outfit changes included in the sitting, I feel like I got a well-rounded photo shoot that doesn't all look like it was from the same day.I love that the pictures all turned out so different that I really could frame them all – and I wanted to. In the end I actually had too many awesome shots and I needed to narrow down my choices because it seemed silly to order one of everything. Luckily, they are pros when it comes to helping you edit down your shots you want to do something with. It was mere minutes at the computer and we had the entire shoot sorted into favorites and outtakes.

But, even once I had sorted I still had what I thought was too many pictures marked as favorites. I started to wonder how on earth I was going to only choose 1 or 2 poses with gems like this one that make me a little misty-eyed thinking about the fact that Kindergarten is just next year. Before long, I'm going to be booking his senior pictures and begging him to smile just like this. Is there anything more "fall" than football?

Thank goodness the package deal Portrait Innovations was running was an amazing score and I ended up ordering a ton of pictures for about half of what I expected they would cost. I've done the "free" studio sittings before and ended up paying huge rates when the shoot was over and I wanted to order just a few pictures, so I love that I was able to get so many poses and prints without racking up a huge bill at the end. So, now here's the hard part: what picture(s) should I order for the holiday card this year? I'm leaning towards the first picture of this post and I am also planning on handing out some of my other favorites in frames for the grandparents. If I decide to order photo gifts, I can hop on over to Portraits.com and browse options even after the shoot so I can take my time deciding which gifts I want to order.This baby loved her first professional photo sitting.

Are you ready to schedule your family sitting? Scheduling an appointment is easy via their online scheduling tool where you can see when the studio is open {many studios are closed Monday or Tuesday} and have varying hours. Pro tip: When photographing multiple kids, you will need extra time so choose a day when there aren’t lots of appointments scheduled that day. You can click on days you are considering and see how many slots are still available to tell you if the studio is busy or not. In general, weekends will be much busier than weekdays, but as it gets closer to the holidays you might find weekdays filling up, too.  I can't tell you enough how happy I am that we're not doing the last minute portrait sitting this year just for holiday cards. Do yourself a favor and take my advice and check out Portrait Innovations near you. Choose your location and schedule a sitting right now before things get crazy before the holidays. They even have some awesome packages and special offers right now that you can take advantage of to get even more prints of your sitting and give you time to frame, scrapbook, or order gifts.

A big thank you to Portrait Innovations for the complimentary photo sitting. As always, all opinions are 100% ours.