Family Portraits in Winnetka and Wilmette
An unhurried hour outdoors, photographed the way your family actually is.
Family Portraits in Winnetka and Wilmette
An unhurried hour outdoors, photographed the way your family actually is.
Winnetka · Wilmette · Kenilworth · Glencoe
Most family photographs fail in the same way. Everyone gets arranged, everyone holds a face that isn’t theirs, and the picture comes back looking like people who resemble your family. It goes on a shelf and nobody looks at it twice.
I work the other direction. We go somewhere your family already likes, I mostly stay out of the way, and I wait. Your four year old does not have to stand still. Your twelve year old does not have to want to be there. About ten minutes in, everyone stops performing, and that’s when the session really starts.
What I’m waiting for is the thing that only happens when nobody’s trying. It’s almost never the picture everybody posed for. It’s what happens thirty seconds later.
What a Session Looks Like
Most sessions run about an hour, and we schedule them around your family rather than around the sun. Mornings, mid afternoon, before dinner. If your two year old naps at one, we don’t photograph at one.
Good light exists all day if you know where to look for it, and knowing where to look is most of what twenty years buys you. Open shade, north-facing windows, the right side of a tree line. I scout before you arrive and pick the spot to fit the hour we’ve chosen.
There’s no shot list. We walk, I talk to your kids, and I photograph. Somewhere in the middle you’ll forget I’m there, which is the whole point. If the toddler melts down, we sit down and wait it out. That’s built into the hour, not a disaster.
We’ll do the formal grouping too, the one where everyone looks at the camera. Grandparents want it and it belongs on the wall. It takes about ten minutes and then we go back to the real work.
Bring the dog if the dog is part of the family. Bring a snack, and a change of clothes for whoever is going to spill something.
I’ll help you think through what everyone should wear beforehand, so nobody is deciding at four in the afternoon.
Extended Family and Larger Groups
When family is in town, this is often the only hour all year when everyone is in one place. Those sessions work differently: more people, more combinations, more standing around.
I plan them ahead. We work out the groupings before the day rather than during it, start with everyone together while the youngest are still cooperating, and work down to smaller units from there. Budget ninety minutes rather than sixty.
Multi generation sessions are some of the most valuable work I do, and the reason is not subtle. These are the photographs families come back for.
Where We Photograph
Gillson Park in Wilmette, Crow Island Woods in Winnetka, and the Skokie Lagoons are where most outdoor sessions happen. Each gives something different: open water and beach grass at Gillson, oak canopy and quiet at Crow Island, real wilderness at the Lagoons.
If there’s somewhere your family already loves, a backyard, a grandparent’s house, a lakefront you walk every Sunday, that’s usually better than anything I’d pick. I’m glad to travel.
And your own home is always an option, in any weather.
Winnetka · Wilmette · Kenilworth · Glencoe · Northfield · Highland Park · Northbrook · Glenview · Deerfield · Evanston
What You End Up With
Not four hundred files on a drive you keep meaning to sort through.
About two weeks after the session we sit down together and go through the images. I help you decide which ones are worth keeping and what to do with them. Most people are surprised by how much they enjoy this part.
Then albums and framed pieces arrive finished. For wall artwork I bring it to your home and hang it myself, so it ends up on the wall instead of leaning against it for eight months.
I keep your images archived permanently. If something is damaged, or you want another copy in fifteen years, it’s still there.
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.
2. We Meet in Good Light
Outdoors in the last hour before sunset, or at your home if that’s the better call. No shot list, no forced smiles.
3. We Choose Together
About two weeks later we sit down and go through the images and decide what’s worth keeping.
4. I Deliver It and Hang It
Albums and framed pieces arrive finished. Wall artwork I bring to your home and put up myself.
Investment
Sessions begin at $595. This covers our time together, the editing, and a private appointment where we choose your images.
Most families invest between $1,500 and $3,000 in albums, printed artwork and digital images. Your session fee is credited toward any collection.
Nothing is decided before you’ve seen the photographs.
In Their Words
Questions People Ask
What if my kids don’t cooperate?
They usually don’t, and it usually doesn’t matter. The pictures worth keeping tend to come from the parts that go sideways. An hour is long enough to absorb one meltdown and still get everything.
How long is a session?
About an hour. I don’t stack sessions back to back, so if we’re getting something good we’re not stopping because the clock says so.
What should we wear?
We’ll talk about this before the day. In general: avoid logos and busy patterns, pick two or three colors that sit near each other, and let everyone look like themselves.
What happens if it rains?
We move it. Chicago weather makes this a routine part of the process, not an emergency.
When do we see the photographs?
About two weeks after the session, at the ordering appointment. Seeing them together and full size is a different experience than scrolling a gallery on a phone, and the choices people make are better for it.
Do we get digital files?
Yes. Every collection includes digital images, and larger collections include the full edited set.
