Portraits in the Snow

One day in March, we woke up to a back yard that looked like this. Seriously, March.  Late March.  So, I figured that it was high time to take some portraits in the snow.  Sure, I have oodles of pictures in the snow.  But portraits are a different animal.  They require forethought and coordination.  And cooperation, which is always the hardest to come by.  I spent 20 minutes digging through closets to consider my options.  I may be biased, but I thought the look came together nicely.

 

S has a grumpy face above because she ignored my encouragement towards snow boots and wore her mary janes without socks.  She had a serious case of cold feet.  Surprise.  Surprise.

 

So we wandered and played for a few minutes while she went inside to take another pass at heeding her mother's advice. 

The kids chose a different location.  And J couldn't resist pulling on the tree branches near him which gave K a spine chilling surprise.

And then B heard the tic tacs that were rattling around in S's jacket pocket.

Since she had busted S's attempt at stealthy candy sneaking fair and square, I encouraged her to share.

Everybody was pretty happy about that.  You can see their little lips closed around those tangy orange candies.

And somewhere in the midst of all of that, I managed to get this shot.  My favorite one.

 

And since we were outside anyway, with clean faces and cute jackets to boot, I took a few individual shots. 

B is the hardest to catch, as usual.  The snow was irresistible to her little mittened hands.



R is almost always a piece of cake.  I think she's my most willing photo subject.

And J just loves being out in the elements.

S has been less than enthusiastic about being in pictures lately.  Which is ironic since her photo is the only single portrait that I edited.  And because she got a camera for her birthday.  Which took her a month to get around to charging.  But now she's turning into quite a shutterbug.  It will be interesting to watch that develop.  At the moment, she's roping her little sisters into making a movie.

K mostly loves to take fun/unique pictures.  But she's a trooper and goes along with my spontaneous photo shoots.  And my not-so-spontaneous ones.  With only a little grumbling.

 

We didn't stay out long.  Their jackets weren't all that warm.  Hot chocolate was beckoning . . .

 

But R was not ready to leave our winter wonderland to head indoors.  She wanted to have a snowball fight.  Which went something like this.

She was a little worried that she'd get in trouble for hitting my camera.

 

But I just pelted her with snow instead.

And she returned the favor.

I love how much joy this girl finds in life (in between all her meltdowns).