BALBOA PARK, SAN DIEGO
Major ‘This is Us’ vibes happening at Angela and Joe’s Balboa Park Family Session over the weekend! What a fun family! I had the best time hanging out with this crew and capturing their wonderful dynamic. Also..babies. Babies bring out the joy in people like nothing else! The real treat was photographing four generations of women, how incredible is that?! This is the second time Angela and her family have been able to photograph four generations of women in their family together. Angela has a picture of her as a baby with her Mom, Grandmother, and Great-Grandmother, just like baby Kensington now has. What a true blessing!
Baby Kensington was the best! She was very curious as to what all the commotion was about and why there was a big giant camera in her face and why some crazy lady she didn’t even know was talking to her in an insanely high pitched voice trying to get her to look at said camera. I mean look at those cheeks and those eyes! A baby voice is bound to escape uncontrolled at some point. It’s just a matter of time.
Angela, her husband Joe, and their family were seriously the greatest. They were so warm and friendly and did such a great job being in front of the camera. It’s always awkward getting your picture taken unless you’re like Cindy Crawford or something (is that even a relevant reference anymore? Did I just date myself as prehistoric? ha!) What I enjoyed the most was seeing how they made each other laugh. It was so heart warming to see how full of love they are.
You know what’s not full of love? Bird poop. In the first 10 minutes of our session a duck flew out of the pond and almost pooped on everyone! We weren’t sure if it did at first and had to stop shooting for a “poop-check”. I can say that was a definitely a first for me at a family session! “Hold on, let me see if there is poop in your hair”. Turns out it was a actually like a millimeter away on the ground behind them, so we got out of the poop clean up on Aisle 3.
I actually met Angela through our mutual friend Jasmine years ago. No, like seriously years ago, maybe 8 years or so? It was Jasmine’s birthday and she got the band back together to go out to a nice dinner at Anthony’s by the sea. Afterwords we all met up at a bar for after hours celebratory drinks (many a White Gummy Bear shot was had!) and that’s when I sat down and really got to chatting with Angela. I liked her right away! She just has such a friendly care-free way about her and I remember just chatting it up with her all night! I think I drunkenly added her (and everyone else) on Facebook that night and we have all kept in touch here and there ever since. When she reached out to me to photograph her family and her new sweet baby Kensington, I was so so excited! They are such an incredible family and I was so glad I got to be a part of it for the day.