Oh, Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is that one-day that we get to reflect on how amazing we are! We created LIFE! We raise these children, and never get a break. We get up, get them ready for school, feed them, feed ourselves if we are lucky, change their diapers, help them brush their teeth, drop them off at school, get to work, pick them up from school, feel them dinner, play with them, love them, talk to them, listen to them, brush their teeth, get them in bed, hope they stay in bed, then lull them to sleep when they get out of bed… and finally, we are aloud to, we try to go to sleep, just to get up and do it all over again! (Ya know, or how ever your schedule is). I love being a Mom. I love that I am able to stay home and be a Mom. I love that I am able to work from home, and be there where they need me, whenever they need me, whatever TIME they need me. I love it, and I wouldn’t and couldn’t change it, ever.

I take beautiful photos of children, all the time. I take pictures on the beach, in a park, in the woods, in people’s backyard, and even at the zoo and on playgrounds! I make these beautiful images for everyone (and trust me I LOVE doing it) but It’s so difficult to get pictures of my own kids! “The Shoemakers kids have no shoes?” Yep, that’s me. It takes so much time to get my kids ready, get them to behave, get them to stop crying, hitting each other, yelling at each other, and stand still long enough for me to snap a few photos. Well, until I learned how to use my camera of course. It’s still difficult but now, I know how to set my camera correctly, to not get a hand of blur, or a jumping child’s face in motion. It really did just one day click in my head, “oh. Duh. THATS what I’m doing wrong?” Yes. That simple. (And Yes, I shoot FULL manual, no modes for me, I control exactly how I want my pictures to turn out, because my camera is just a tool, and I am the artist that drives it).

Anyway, Today I set out to get pictures of my babies. You won’t believe the location. It’s gorgeous; it’s lush, overgrown and fun. It’s my parent’s backyard. The place I grew up. It was a lot more maintained back then, but I love that you can’t see the fence, and there is all of this earthy green everywhere. It’s really neat and makes for amazing photos! I tell everyone not to worry what the background in a photo looks like, because it’s really focused on the person IN the photo, and not the background. The background is just extra anyway. It’s for fun, and it’s just for color. So after my parent’s backyard, I went to the campground, because seriously, the campground has the BEST scenery. There is this amazing strip of dirt called the landing. It’s great, it takes you out by the river, which is fabulous for photos – and how lucky we were that it was high tide! Like, super high tide!

So, Happy Mothers Day to me! I succeeded and got AMAZING photos of my babies. Their Daddy is definitely going to be happy and I’m just so proud. By the time we got home, the baby was knocked out, and our big girl, well, she thought she deserved an Oreo, so we had some Oreo’s together before she got tucked into her warm bed.

Love these photos SO MUCH – check them out!

XOXO,
Lauren
Bokeh Love Photography