Ryder's Professional One Year Photo Shoot

This was attempt #4 at a professional photo shoot with the ever-so-talented Gara Hill (Beyond the Blue Studios).  As a quick reminder, the newborn shoot was definitely on the rough end of the spectrum.  We had to do the shoot a little bit after the ideal sleepy-newborn phase (I think most photographers like to do these shoots when the baby is 10-14 days old) because of Ryder's stint in the NICU.  So between the fact that Ryder was closer to 3 weeks old and the fact that he generally was not a baby that slept during the day, he wasn't an ideal photog subject.  He fussed, rather than slept, through the pictures, but Gara still captured some great shots.  The second shoot was the one that we did with Ryder and Elizabeth (Ryder's cousin) when Ryder was 5 months old.  It was pretty much awful.  I blogged about it in detail, so I won't rehash that miserable episode here.  Not long thereafter, we tried our luck once again with a 6 month session.  It was the most epic fail of all.  Again, I will refer you back to an entire blog entry about that particular picnic.  Gara captured some cute photos from each of the shoots despite the less-than-favorable conditions.

Compared to the prior sessions, I'd call the one-year shoot a huge success. Ryder was still inexplicably leery and uptight.  He was clingy, and we had several close-calls in which Ryder neared tantrum mode.  It was nearly impossible to capture true smiles from the little dude, but still... he didn't cry throughout the entire session, and he even allowed us to put him down for short intervals of time.  All in all, I'd give Ryder a B- (which might be slightly generous) in comparison to the D- that I'd give him for the 5 and 6 month shoots.

I love, love, love Gara's new studio, and pray that Ryder will continue to ease up during photo sessions so that we can take advantage of the amazing location again in the future.

The session included some family shots, in addition to the Ryder shots and cake-smash session.

Family photos:

Ryder solo photos:

Cake-smash photos:

Classic Ryder

Silly outtake photos (the perks of having a second photographer shooting):

Oh, the things we'll do to try to elicit a smile... 

This is actually one of my faves.