Fun Bellevue Family Photo Session at Chism Beach Park

One of my favorite things about being a wedding photographer is being able to make new friends of the couples that I work with.  This includes staying in touch, and being able to record other important events in their lives.  Probably the most important occurrence for most couples is the birth of their first child.  I love being able to get together with “my couples” for first-baby photo session.  Of course, I also love taking photos of any subsequent kids but there is something extra special about taking photos with baby #1. I was the photographer at May and Joel’s wedding in Summer 2015.  Their daughter Zoe was born in December 2017, and May got in touch with me the following spring about doing a first baby/family photo session sometime in the summer.  We talked about it a bit, and decided that we’d try for August when Zoe should be mobile, if not yet walking.  But Joel’s work schedule was changed shortly before our scheduled session, so we reset the date for late in September.

Our Photo Session at Chism Park

As the date got close the weather was starting to get a bit iffy, as it usually does in late September in Seattle.  May and I talked it over and we decided that unless it was actually raining we’d go ahead and do the session.  Otherwise we were going to possibly have problems with Joel’s schedule again.  The day of the session we lucked out and had a very nice day; not sunny, but certainly not raining.  From a photographer’s standpoint it was pretty much perfect weather for photos, nice and warm but no bright sun to make babies (or adults) have a case of the “blinkies”. Zoe was a wonderful subject!  She was very engaged and interested in what was going on, and clearly was used to having her photo taken.  She was not quite walking yet, but was able to stand on her own if she had something to hold onto.  Pretty much a perfect subject for a photo shoot! May had brought along several outfits, so we got to see several different looks for Zoe during our session.  I got plenty of photos of the family together, but Zoe was the star of the show and we had a lot of fun finding places that would work well for photos.  As I remembered very well from my own kids, a baby of this age will try to eat anything she can put into her mouth, and Zoe was no exception!  But we managed to keep her from chomping on too many leaves and got lots of photos of Zoe in all of her different clothes.