Jones Family on Location

As kids head back to school, this post hits home. For those with seniors in high school, you may be feeling a little nostalgic or have some fears about your children going off to college or to life in the real world. This is the perfect time to capture these fleeting memories. That is exactly what the Jones family did in this session. 

Hayes & Fisk photographed Valencia and James’ wedding twenty years ago and we have continued to create lasting memories for their family. It had been a while since they updated their family portrait and portraits of the boys, so this was the perfect time before James went off to college. 

James inherited his father's house, so we chose to create these family portraits at their new home in Surry, Virginia. We thought it was the perfect location to capture this special time. The afternoon began with a chance of thunderstorms; however, we moved forward and ended up with weather that served our purposes - although, we did lose one Profoto strobe because of a gust of wind, even while using a sandbag!  Moving quickly in between light rain showers and wind, we were able to get the job done, even including Hercules the family dog.

The adjacent field of yellow buttercup flowers provided a colorful and beautiful background for the main family oil portrait, while a big old pine tree with James’ father’s azaleas was chosen as the background for the individual oils of each son. At first, getting the boys to smile was not an easy task, but as we ran back and forth to the porch for cover from the rain we were all laughing and enjoying the session. This time allowed the boys to become so comfortable in front of our cameras that they eventually were having a good time and smiling. This made Valencia so happy to finally have updated hand-painted oil portraits to grace the interior of their new home with boys’ smiles shining bright.

We finished the session with a few poses of James and Valencia individually, with each of their sons, and a few shots of Hercules alone. All in all a perfect session, perfect day!