Every year I drag my family out to some location I've been eyeing and I take our family pictures. With a tripod. Tripod pictures are not for the faint of heart. I have a remote control and set it on 2 second delay so that I have time to hide the dang thing. This family pictures was a "big one" - as in ALL of my siblings were in the same place at the same time. (No stick heads!!!!) As our family grows and people marry in or little ones arrive, our planning becomes a lot more involved. I make sure everyone with some sort of calendar comes to dinner with it and I give my siblings and parents three possible dates and work from there. This year I wanted to shoot at Jordan Pines up Big Cottonwood Canyon in the fall. If you've read my style guide for what to wear for family pictures, you'll know that one of the things I talk about is picking outfits that match your home decor. In past years I have been 100% selfish and picked out a color scheme that would match my house. I don't even feel bad about it. I figure it's the least my family can do for me organizing and performing the entire event. But here's the thing; fall colors don't really match my house. But they do match my mom's. So I was nice this year and let mom have the cohesive pictures. 

     We had the date set, the outfits picked out and I sneakily, (like always) told my family to be ready to leave a half an hour before we actually had to leave. But due to being a big family and some misunderstanding, we didn't leave until an hour after we needed to leave. AKA an hour and a half from when I told them. I was a bit stressed driving up the canyon - not only for the setting sun, but we were on borrowed time and there was a winter watch advisory in effect. 

    If you know my family, you know we are full of sarcasm, practical jokes and messing around. Which pretty much sums up every photoshoot with them, ever. In an effort to save time, I called the van and was put on speaker phone to do a run down of events - stressing that we seriously needed to be fast!

     We arrived at the location, got out and booked it to the spot I had preplanned. Luckily we were there on a weekday and only ran into a handful of photographers as opposed to the entire photo population of Utah that would be there on a Saturday. My little Jonesy was having a hard time and wanted to bring his play sword with him. It took a bit of warming and a lot of bribing to get him to semi-cooperate. (Or at least look at the camera.) Amazingly, we finished the shoot in about 30-45 minutes and used up all the light we could. The next day I got online to see someone had posted a picture of Jordan Pines completely buried in snow. Our guardian angels were looking out for us that evening! For being a total stress case and forgetting half the poses I wanted to do, I'd say these turned out alright! 

(Robert insists every year he do his own poses - we've coined them the "D-bag" pose)