Did I ever show you these?

Back in November, ya know, waaaaaay back in 2011, we had a friend with a side photography business take some family photos for us. This was largely due to the fact that, in searching for a picture to use on our holiday card, I found that all three of us were in approximately no pictures together. I had tons of great pictures of Milo, lots of great pictures of Pat and Milo, and two acceptable pictures of Milo and I (as in, both of us are in the frame and in focus). So it was clearly time to bring in the professionals.

Our previous experiences with professional photographers involved:

a 900 year old wedding photographer who tried to make us late for our own wedding and took pretty uniformly crappy pictures
a newborn photographer who was upset that our 6 day old baby wouldn’t fall asleep on command (hey lady, I got news for you, this was the beginning of a trend…)

So yeah. I would put us in the “once bitten, twice shy” category, but also in the “oh holy hell we need a picture of the three of us that isn’t taken by Pat’s outstretch arm!” And let me tell you, I’m so glad not only that we gave it a go, but that we had the good sense to hire someone that 1) we knew was awesome as a person, 2) we had seen LOTS of his pictures previously and had an idea of his flavor of photography, and 3) had a small child himself so wasn’t phased by the fact that my child was, in fact, a one year old.

In addition to the photo we put on our holiday card, he also captured these gems.

Hats off to Nate Grahek over at: www.nathangrahek.com