Those of you familiar with our wedding photography disaster might know that I’m a bit camera shy when it comes to professional photographers. That’s why we invested in a decent digital SLR and have been taking candid shots of Joe all this time instead of hauling him to a photography studio every month like normal families. But I was feeling kind of guilty for relying on our very amateur skills now that Joe’s approaching his first birthday. So, I thought it might be a good idea to suck it up and take Joe in for a photo shoot.

We found out about a great program, Celebrating Adoption, where newly adoptive parents can schedule a free session with a professional photographer. I checked it out, found a local participating photographer, and made an appointment. Friday was the big day.

Overall, it was a fun shoot even if it was during Joe’s nap time (duh) so that he wasn’t his usual playful and happy self. In all fairness, he may have been feeling icky given that he has had the stomach flu (and been miserable) for the past few days.

I really liked the photographer, Tanya, and her work, which you can check out here. She’s quite good and, if we could afford it, we’d use her again. I’m just not sure that we’ll get what we were expecting from this recent session since our adorable little Joe was being stubborn…plus there was some miscommunication about how it would all play out.

I had prepared for and was expecting a few clothing changes, but apparently I was supposed to say something ahead of time. (I thought it was a given, hence the miscommunication.) The shoot felt like it went really fast and didn’t last as long as I was expecting it to (maybe because of our uncooperative subject…or his overinvolved mama?). We didn’t get around to any changes since Tanya wasn’t aware that I was planning on that. Then the shoot was over and it was too late. I was really disappointed because I wanted several shots of Joe in different outfits for a coffee table book. I’m not into giant wall prints. Really, who hangs a 20×24 photo of their kid — or anyone — anywhere? Even my Nonie uses smaller photos for her family photo wall, maybe 10×13s or even 8×10s?(OK, OK, no offense intended; some folks with the wall space in a larger home might want the monster prints, but that’s just not our style.)

There are a couple of cute shots from the session on Tanya’s blog. You can click here for a sneak peak. Obviously Joe wasn’t very animated even though the photography is great. (Despite our best efforts acting like fools, we couldn’t get him to break into a smile the entire time.) Fingers crossed that there are versions of him smiling when we view the proofs!

UPDATE (3/19): Tanya called this morning and graciously offered to do another session at no expense, despite the fact that I was the dodo that screwed it all up. We really do love her work so I’m nixing Plan B in the hopes that Joseph will be more cooperative this time. She even offered to include Dan and I in the mix. Guess we’d better all get haircuts and look our best! Coffee table book here we come. Who knows…maybe we’ll all look so good that we will want a giant photo over the mantle. Hmmm???