Childhood is magical, chaotic, and absolutely beautiful. It is a joy for me to artfully document this stage of your family’s journey and perfectly preserve it in a gorgeous heirloom album. You and your children will adore flipping through the thick pages together, reliving the fun, year after year.

This busy mama reach out looking to create some portraits of her young UWS family and each of her three sweet, energetic boys. Little ones are busy, which is part of the magic of the 5 and under crowd, so during our pre-session consultation we deiced on a lifestyle family photography in Central Park. Parks make beautiful locations for family photos because they offer plenty of trees for shade and plenty of room to run around. Mom wanted to frequent areas of the park she often visited with her boys, which I always love to do for lifestyle sessions. For more traditional portraits, I always make sure we have some quieter spots with fewer people, and we can always do a combination of both at each outdoor family photography session.

To keep the boys excited and having a great time, I recommended mom bring bubbles. Bubbles never disappoint (unless all the juice spills out. Pro tip: bring lots of bubble juice.). We started this NYC family photography session with bubbles and ended it with bubbles. The bubbles helped create gorgeous, natural photos of the kids being kids, which are some of my absolute favorite images from the session.

It’s not enough to keep the boys having fun, but during a hot summer family photo session it’s important to also keep them cool. I always try to schedule as close to sunset as possible, which not only provides the prettiest light, but a break from the hot summer sun. I encourage parents to bring plenty of water, too.

For this session, I had a very cool idea. I proposed we let the boys pick out popsicles from a nearby stand and enjoy them on a large rock in Central Park. It was the perfect way to relax at the end of a busy session and reward the boys for being fun and open to my photographic suggestions.

Last, but not least, we completed the session with popsicles. A few sweet, mostly quiet moments were a perfect way to relax on this warm summer evening. The bubbles were awesome for individual child portraits, but sharing popsicles resulted in the best sibling and family portraits. I know mom and dad will adore these images more with each passing year.