The Photo Shoot

Greetings from China ...
er, a boarded-up Chinese restaurant in Southeast DC

Two years ago, we had our first family photos made as a family of six. We were living in Tulsa, and some of our friends who had adopted first a single boy and then a sibling group of five (!)--and that was in addition to their two biological children--had done some amazing photos downtown that totally impressed us, so we got the name of their photographer and booked her. She gave us a great deal and did an outstanding job for us as well, and we will always treasure those photos. They beautifully capture the personality of our family and our beloved city. You can see some of those here.

We decided to forgo another family photography session last fall, but I didn't want to wait any longer than two years. The kids change too much; plus we're now living in a new city and I wanted to have photos that reflected that. It would normally seem overwhelming for me to have to choose a photographer in a city like Washington, DC, where there must be a million and prices would be double or triple what they were in Tulsa. But thankfully, I happened to know one. He's the husband of one of my good friends, and by trade he's an architect, but he's begun dabbling in photography. I had seen some lovely photos he had taken of my friend and her two young boys, and I decided to give him a try if he would be willing to work with us. I asked my friend to ask him, and she got us in touch, and we began planning a date and discussing the details of the shoot.

The location was the subject of much debate. I was pretty open to ideas, but I did prefer to do it in an area close to home, where we spend a lot of time. Also, in our previous family photos, we had used an urban location, a dilapidated but colorful and interesting empty warehouse, and we loved how the pictures turned out. So we thought if we could sort of recreate that in DC, that would be great.


Now, there are several locations fitting the description of "urban" and "dilapidated" near our house; in fact we walk by them almost every day. (For more on that, read my blog entry here.) But I wasn't so sure any of them would be appropriate for family photos; for some of them, "dilapidated" would be a kind description, and we don't want to scare people who see our pictures. So we had a dilemma (if that word can be used to describe something as mundane as choosing location for family photos).


Since we weren't sure about using our own neighborhood for the shoot, we thought the next best place might be the Capitol Hill neighborhood. It's where Harvey works, and we do spend a lot of time there eating out, shopping, and so on. Plus the historic rowhouses and other buildings, with their wrought-iron gates and leaf-strewn sidewalks, seemed to be the perfect backdrop. The problem with shooting on the Hill is the people. Not the quality of them but the quantity. Our photographer was concerned that there would be too many people around and not enough room to move and spread out as we might need to.


So we returned to our own backyard. There's an area behind our house where Harvey had taken the kids to ride bikes, empty parking lots of old brick and painted-brick buildings that had been abandoned (they will soon be torn down to make way for a new development of housing, cafes, and shops, including a Wal-Mart). I hadn't been back there, but our photographer agreed to meet us there to see if we could make it work.


We did. We ran into a couple obstacles, including the weather (cloudy, chilly, and a little windy, with sprinkles) and getting shooed away once by a security car (I'm quite sure that what we were doing behind those buildings isn't the worst thing that's happened there). But we had a great time with the photographer, and we're happy with his work and his willingness to take a risk with the location to get the look and feel we wanted. I think we got just what we were hoping for (as long as you don't notice that dirty needle on the window ledge). Thank you, Chris and Tessa!