We’re checking in this week with ya to share just some of the things & businesses/ people that we’ve been photographing in the past 9 months (during/ in tandem with all of our normal wedding, Engagement, & Portrait Session client work). At the end of Summer 2021/ beginning of Autumn 2021 a whole 9 months ago (and during a very busy autumn 2021 Wedding Season) we were hired to work with a non-profit to capture Portrait Sessions for adoptable kids-! The company had randomly reached out to us via email initially in November 2020 to ask to hire us after they’d seen some of our blog posts online here on our website of some Family Portrait Sessions that we’d captured for our paying clients in previous years online. Obviously the Pandemic flared horribly over the winter of 2020-2021, so we kept in touch with them from late 2020 to early 2021 to sort everything out and get the ball rolling on all of the paperwork, background checks, and finalized details. Once it was safer with Covid-19 AND once all of the background checks and months of paperwork had been finished up in Spring/ Summer 2021, we started in on trying to balance all of our paying Wedding, Engagement Session, and Portrait Session clients in Autumn 2021 with our work for the non-profit (as well as work capturing Career Portraits of business professionals)-!
You’ve likely noticed that we haven’t blogged as much on here since 9 months ago and that’s because we’ve been busy capturing Business Career Portraits (that our clients haven’t wanted to be shared online just Yet) as well as doing our annual Low Season (i.e. winter) in-person & ZOOM Wedding Consultations for 2023 & 2024... but this time around this past Autumn 2021 & Winter 2021-2022 we’ve also been extremely busy capturing adoptable kids for this non-profit! We’re obviously not allowed to show our Professionally captured Photographs of the adoptable children here on our website, so we’ve been struggling with how to best share this exciting news about the work we’ve been doing/ who we’ve been professionally photographing for the non-profit weekly (& then during our busiest Jenny and Jason Photography, LLC wedding & Portrait Session client months, every-other-week for these Adoption Portrait Sessions for one kid at a time since our own client schedule gets extremely heavy from Spring to Autumn Weddings, Engagement Sessions, & Portrait Sessions when the better weather kicks in). We haven’t yet nailed down how to best put into photographs or words what these past 9 months have been like working with adoptable (anywhere from 2 year old to 15 year old) kids for the non-profit, so we figured we’d share some outtakes from these Portrait Sessions and write a bit in between to give you an idea of what we’ve been doing to make a difference in these kids’ lives by capturing their Adoption Portrait Sessions & interviewing them for the non-profit-! ((We’ll keep the inspirational quotes, happenings, and adoption info for another blog post since that’s a whole other blog post in & of itself-!))
We’ve been working extremely hard to get amazing Adoption Portrait Sessions captured for many adoptable kids for the non-profit that we’ve been working with. Though the standards weren’t there to begin with, we approach each and EVERY Portrait Session the same high, high standards that we have for our photography & directing work for our own Jenny and Jason Photography, LLC Wedding, Engagement, Portrait, & Business clients. We treat every child with respect and our aim of every single Session is to show these sweet kids in the best light (both literally and metaphorically).
You’ll notice that in many of these outtakes that we accidentally or purposefully captured each other in DURING an Adoptable Child Portrait Session while we were working hard scouting, photographing, and directing. Portrait Photography is NOT easy work and we always give it 200% no matter what.
Since we treat every single Portrait Session the same, we also pre-advise these clients on best garb, best posing, and more, but during these (as for all past Children Sessions that we’ve been paid to capture over the past 13 years) we also have to make the kids feel safe, powerful, and happy.
Every single age seems to have its own challenges, but we always approach every child with serenity, respect, and ample space as the guardians stand by and watch us work. Some adults have stepped in to be more helpful with encouraging the children while others have preferred to stay on the sidelines and have us fully direct the kids to enjoy their toys and space for creativity.
As we’re sure anyone with kids knows, there’s a fine line that we tread with directing the children and letting them play with their toys/ emote natural happiness. Of course children need to be given direction, but some of the most genuine smiles and joy that we’ve been able to capture has always been in allowing kids to do their cartwheels, get their energy out, and really shine. We’ve captured Portrait and Family Portrait Sessions with kids in them for 13 years, so these are no different and we have an extensive background in this type of photography work.
For these Adoptable Child Portrait Sessions we most often wear our full Jenny and Jason Photography Portrait Session Logo-ed zip-ups that we’ve had for at least 5 or 6 years (with a logo that we had hand drawn from Jenny’s own design). Our Wedding Photography garb that we wear for all of our couples’ weddings is much more elevated/ almost black-tie level fancy (and our Engagement/ Family Portrait Session garb is higher end too), but to keep the kids less intimidated we find it most appropriate to wear our Jenny and Jason Photography, LLC Logo-ed zip-ups (that we wear most often to non-work more relaxed events in normal, every day life).
During one day of photographing one of these Child Adoption Portrait Sessions (the below photograph) we were captured before heading home for the evening.. As you can see, we always wear our medical masks to keep all of the kids (as well as our other clients) safe-! Since these Sessions are 30 minutes short and are outdoors we opt for surgical masks for these Portrait Sessions for the non-profit, though we always wear our KN95s or surgical masks for weddings and Portrait Sessions for our own Jenny and Jason Photography clients as well (just to play it safe for everyone).
You’ll notice that a lot of these behind-the-scenes images are out-of-focus or cropped and that’s because we were often either location scouting for one of their Portrait Sessions or we were in the background of each others’ images (that we cropped the child out of).
As any parent or preschool/ elementary school teacher may tell you, working with kids can at times be challenging, but it’s extremely rewarding- especially in these situations of trying to capture the best ever images specifically so that the kids can be adopted. Our hearts pretty much explode after some of the conversations and interviews that we do with the kids. In all honesty for the first few months of doing these we would get in the car and bawl on the drive home sympathizing for many of the kids, but we try to keep our spirits high as we work hard to help the kids shine.
One thing we always try to do during and after these Adoption Portrait Sessions for the non-profit is give the child some helpful wise words & life tips throughout the Session. If there’s anything that the kid is interested in or wants to talk about we always, always listen and try to softly add some helpful feedback for them.
One of the most important things in the world is to listen to kids when they’re hurting, need to say something, and/ or need support. We know that parents and other guardians can often get tired, worn out, and burnt out, so we look at ourselves as kind of people who can verbally build kids up even on a not-so-great day that they may be having. We go in to the Sessions with a positive, but understanding attitude and try to instill in the kids a sense of safety since they have their guardian next to them and us at a distance helping direct them to just play with their toys and enjoy life after school for a minute.
To be completely honest we didn’t fully know what we were in for when we were asked to/ hired to photograph these kids for their Adoption Portrait Sessions 9 months ago, but it’s some of the most meaningful work that we do throughout the year and overall some of the most important work that we’ve done in our past 13 years in our paid Professional Photography careers. It’s pretty intense photographing kids’ formal Adoption Portrait Sessions as well as being full-time wedding & portrait photographers still running our own business (in our 13th year of our careers in this), but it’s been well worth it to help some of the most in need of our work.
We hope you’ve enjoyed catching up with us on this exciting non-profit addition to our work for Jenny and Jason Photography, LLC and we hope to soon share some other Winter & Spring 2022 projects that we were paid to capture lately amidst the start to our 2022 Wedding Season-! We’re still photographing weddings, Engagement Sessions, Portraits, and Corporate Sessions (many that are booked out to autumn/ winter 2023 with contracts & pay set), but we’re thankful that we get to impact these kids’ lives on a weekly or every-other-week basis. We’re currently prepping to capture 2 more within the week before finishing up another round of editing weddings for our client couples & editing Lifestyle Sessions for corporations, so the juggle of work continues-! In the meantime know that we’re doing ok, are getting 2 days “off” per week when we can, and are trying to maintain our balancing act (all while still masking up to keep all of our clients and ourselves safe).