This gallery was part of their 2-year-old photos in 2019. At this point, I had gained a lot more competence with a camera, plus I had discovered that I already owned a fantastic lens to play with – the Tamron 70-200 mm, f2.8. My work had purchased this lens for a video event way back in 2012 to shoot a speech by one of our clients from the back of the room. It was a very expensive lens, but it didn’t have much use to me. Honestly, I hadn’t really seen the point of spending that kind of money on a lens back then, but boy am I glad that we did! This lens has been a go-to for me as I have grown into a professional photographer. It gives excellent depth of field and helps to really capture the subjects.

The idea for this shoot was to do more of a gender-bent scene. We always love putting the girls in dresses for our photoshoots, but Calli (their mom and my sister) has never loved how she looks in dresses. When they are two, they weren’t showing much of a preference one way or another, but I wanted to give them something look back on if they did grow up not to love dresses. Adam had this awesome chess table and chess set-up. We stuck it in our backyard and let the magic happen. Giving kids props and things to play with is always a sure-fire way to get great shots. Just make sure you have adults handy to keep on eye on them if they props are delicate.