The Photos You Keep Meaning to Take
Family, Maternity and Newborn portraits on Chicago's North Shore.
Twenty years behind a camera. Unhurried sessions in real light, and artwork made to hang on your walls, not disappear into a phone.
The Photos You Keep Meaning to Take
Family, Maternity and Newborn portraits on Chicago's North Shore.
Twenty years behind a camera. Unhurried sessions in real light, and artwork made to hang on your walls, not disappear into a phone.
Winnetka · Wilmette · Kenilworth · Glencoe
Behind the Camera
I’m Miguel. Twenty years behind a camera, starting in 2005 as an assistant at a commercial photo studio in New Jersey and eventually building my own studio here.
What twenty years actually buys you is not better equipment. It’s that very little surprises me anymore. The toddler who melts down twenty minutes in. The light going flat early. The teenager who wants nothing to do with any of this. I’ve worked through all of it, and I’ve learned that the session usually turns around about ten minutes after everyone stops trying.
So I don’t rush. I follow your family’s lead, stay mostly out of the way, and wait. That patience is most of what you’re hiring, and it’s the thing I couldn’t have offered you early on.
Services
Whatever the occasion, I’m doing the same thing: waiting. The picture worth keeping is almost never the one everybody arranged themselves for. It’s what happens thirty seconds later, when the arranging is over and people go back to being themselves.
Family Portraits
Every family has a version of itself that only shows up when nobody’s trying. That’s what I’m watching for. An unhurried hour outdoors, at your favorite place, and images you’ll still want on your wall in twenty years.
No shot list, no forced smiles, nobody telling your four year old to stand still. Just real light and enough time that everyone stops performing. Bring the dog if the dog is part of the family.
Then we choose the images together, and I turn them into artwork you’ll actually live with.
Maternity Portraits
There’s a short window where this version of you exists, and it passes faster than anyone tells you. An unhurried hour outdoors, photographing you exactly as you are right now.
No props, no forced poses, nothing that will look dated in a decade. Just real light, and time enough that you stop thinking about the camera. Your partner and your older children are welcome in the frame.
Most women tell me they almost didn’t book. Nobody has told me they regret it.
Newborn
They change more in the first two weeks than they will in any two weeks that follow. I photograph newborns at home, on your baby’s schedule rather than mine.
Your own light, your own rooms, no props and nothing posed. We stop when the baby needs stopping and start again when they’re ready.
Book while you’re expecting and I’ll hold a window around your due date, not a date on the calendar.
Weddings
I came to photographing weddings after twenty years of portrait work, which means I’d already spent two decades learning light and how to put people at ease. I work quietly, stay out of the day, and photograph what actually happens rather than rearranging it.
Family portraits take twenty minutes, not an hour. The two of you don’t need to know how to pose. And for the rest of the day you’ll mostly forget I’m there, which is the point.
A limited number of weddings each year, so the ones I take get everything I have.
Celebrations
The moments worth photographing at a celebration are rarely the scheduled ones. Twenty years behind a camera has taught me where to stand and when to wait, so you get the speeches and the candles and everything happening at the edges of the room.
Bar and bat mitzvahs, sweet sixteens, quinceañeras, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and family gatherings across Chicago’s North Shore.
In Their Words
How It Works
1. We Talk
You tell me about your family, we pick a date, and I help you think through what everyone should wear. Nothing complicated. Mostly I’m trying to make sure the session fits the people in it.
2. We Meet in Good Light
An hour at whatever time suits your family, outdoors or at home. No shot list. Your children don’t have to cooperate and it goes better when they don’t. You’ll forget I’m there somewhere in the middle.
3. We Choose Together
About two weeks later we sit down and go through the images, and I help you decide what’s worth keeping and how to live with it. This is the part most people are surprised they enjoy. You decide nothing until you’ve seen the photographs.
4. I Deliver It and Hang It
Albums and framed pieces arrive finished. For wall artwork I bring it to your home and put it on the wall myself. You don’t end up with four hundred files on a drive you keep meaning to sort through.
Investment
Sessions begin at $595. This covers our time together, the editing, and a private appointment where we choose your images. Nothing is decided before you’ve seen the photographs.
Most families invest between $1,500 and $3,000 in albums, printed artwork and digital images. Your session fee is credited toward any collection.
Serving Chicago's North Shore
Most sessions happen at Gillson Park, Crow Island Woods, or the Skokie Lagoons. I’m glad to travel farther if there’s somewhere your family already loves.
Winnetka · Wilmette · Kenilworth · Glencoe · Northfield · Highland Park · Northbrook · Glenview · Deerfield · Evanston
Newborn sessions happen at your home. Everything else is outdoors
