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This photo shoot was a lot of fun. Carrie is friends with my wife, was in town visiting some family, and asked me to take some photos of her and the girls.

I don’t bring my family along to client shoots for obvious reasons, but this shoot was different and since Carrie is friends with my wife; my whole family (the 4 of us) came along. My son, Jackson, wearing a bright neon colored shirt, kept wanting to follow Carrie and the girls to the various spots where I was setting them up to take photos. It was mostly cute, and luckily my wife, Jennifer, was there to help corral him.

Near Death Tumble

We started off at the Monarch butterfly grove in Pismo and made our way toward the beach, stopping along the way at a few different spots. At one point I was walking backward, trying to get a shot framed up, and tripped on a tree root, catching air for a second and landing flat on my back and on my camera bag. Thankfully neither myself or the camera gear was damaged, but I was pretty rattled and very surprised.

Toddler On The Loose

It got a little more interesting when Jennifer had to take baby Melody back to the car for emergency baby situations and we opted to let Jackson stay with me for the remainder of the shoot. Well, he was running all over the place, sometimes further than I’m comfortable with. Luckily he is a good listener and comes running back when you holler (yes, holler), but it definitely added a layer of complexity to the shoot that I’m not used to.

Toddler Assistant?

I employed Jackson to hold my light stand during the last setup, where we wanted to capture the awesome sunset. This was both hilarious and slightly stressful. He kept wanting to let go of the light stand and splash around in the mud. Carrie’s oldest daughter was busy watching Jackson play, and the baby was watching the sunset. So my directing went something like this; “Jackson, both hands on the umbrella buddy, Jadyn look at me and give me your biggest smile…” while Carrie was trying to make the baby laugh, and when she succeeded, I would shout, “Jordyn!” and snap a photo. It took a number of tries but we got one solid shot of everyone in good form (scroll all the way down to see that shot.)

In Conclusion

It would not be wise to hire a toddler as an assistant. But in all honesty, as he gets bigger and bigger, it’s exciting to think about all the cool stuff we are going to be able to do together, and just maybe he will be my second shooter someday.

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