I think we spent about 45 minutes total. With as busy as families are these days, we had been juggling a few dates but carved out a few minutes over the weekend to grab some beautiful images of the family.
My friend Huy Cat came along for lighting support (the truth is, I told him if he came and held a reflector for me, I’d let him hold my new Canon 1D Mark III camera for a few seconds) and we had a great time. It’s quite the challenge getting 6 kids and two adults to all look the same way at the same time, much less take a picture of it.

Ahhh… such is the life I lead. But I love it. I love it because I can’t wait for them to see all their images!

We tried to do a family pyramid, which quickly turned into this:

But 27 seconds later we were here:

I don’t want to spoil the surprise too much, but here’s one more of mom and dad…

Ben Vigil, photographing saints

I’m starting to loose track of how many years I’ve shot the Stewarts. The first time I took their Christmas pictures they caused a little bit of a stir with all her friends when they received her Christmas cards. So now every year I have to live up to the pressure of knowing that all her (and our) friends will be wondering “what the picture will look like this year!”

I literally think about it all year long.

Mom loves black & white so I go there as much as possible when I am processing them. This one is too normal for a Christmas card so I’m safe posting it on the blog.

This think this is my favorite of the kiddos.

[ This is where the image I think she’s going to use for the Christmas card goes… but nobody’s allowed to see it yet. ]

And one last shot of mom…

Ben Vigil