The Heat {Guest Blogger: Joan}

My friend and former co-worker, Joan and her family won the award for photo shoot on the warmest day last summer.  With the heat this summer, I asked her to share how the experience was for them.

     It was the warmest day of the summer. Michelle’s thermometer read 100 degrees when she arrived to do the shoot. 

     I really didn’t know how the shoot would go. There are six people in our family, and our four children range in age from 15 to 22. As you might guess, children that are in this age range tend to share their opinions, frequently and often. On the way to the park for the shoot, I heard over and over how this was a crazy idea and why did we have to do this. Who wants family pictures anyway? (The answer seemed obvious to me, so I just kept staring straight ahead in the car, and thinking that perhaps by some miracle these pictures would turn out. Who would ever think that pictures could be harder when the kids are 15 to 22 than they were when they were 1 to 8?) 

     Michelle was all smiles, and before my eyes my children became nice people! They said hello to Michelle and were all smiling back. Michelle would put together a pose and start shooting. As the kids smiled, someone would say, “I can feel the sweat dripping down my face.” Michelle would respond, “Oh, don’t worry, I can get rid of that when I do the pictures.” My daughter replied, “Good!” and the entire family laughed.

     The wind was also blowing, and it was a really warm breeze. I’m not sure if that helped or not, but it helped us laugh more because our hair kept blowing in our faces.  The kids were teasing each other through the whole thing, and we still laugh about it. At one point, Michelle had the girls kneeling and one of the girls said as she smiled that her leg was killing her. Our son responded in some way about how she was a wimp, and he thought Michelle should take longer. The comments flowed through the entire hour.

     Michelle smiled and was amazing through the entire shoot. We had fun. We really had lots of fun. When we were done, Michelle took our oldest son for the next hour for his senior pictures, and I must admit that we all razzed him as we left. 

     
     The pictures are our favorite family pictures. They look great, but they also remind us of how much fun we had that afternoon. Only our family would pick the hottest day of the summer to have family pictures taken outside!

     
     How much did we like it? We liked it so much that we are going to do it again this summer. Which day will be the warmest?