The Sirilans: family portrait session

Weekends are usually spent with family. In my case, however, I have to work during weekends and take photos of other families spending time together. I love my job though, and I'm not complaining or anything. But it's still nice to be able to take some weekends off and spend time with MY own family for a change. That was what we were supposed to do this weekend. However, Paco has been sick the entire week, so we decided to just stay home. (He's doing better now, fortunately.). Oh, and I also have to catch up on some work because I was too busy taking care of the sick baby to get some real work done the past few days. But in the spirit of weekends, I want to share some photos I recently took of my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew.

My sister Mae and her family are now based in Davao, so we rarely get to see them any more. I have been wanting to take their family photos for months, but we never got around to doing their portrait session until they flew in two of weeks ago just to attend Paco's 1st birthday party. We had a very short portrait session just a couple of hours after the party ended. I was exhausted, but I jumped at the chance to take photos of them. Here are my favorite shots from that mini portrait session:

We started right in front of our house. There's this spot that has awesome light in the afternoon. And I think the blue house in the background actually looks nice.:)

Oh yeah, the reason why these first two shots only have my sister and my brother-in-law in them is because my nephew Liam was doing what most kids (especially boys) his age do when they see a camera. They run away from it.:P


We finally convinced Liam to join his mum and dad for some photos. Here are the shots where he wasn't rolling his eyes or making silly faces.:)

I love this.:) It reminds me of one of my favorite shots from their portrait session that we did over three years ago.





We decided to drive over to another spot inside the village. I managed to snap these just before we got into the cars.


This spot might look familiar because this was the same place where we did Paco's cake smash session. It's the viewing deck in our village.

ONe of my favorite shots of Liam. He looks so grown up here! I started taking photos professional around the same time he was born. So, I guess my photography career is just about this big.:)

We walked over to the playground and took some more shots there.

My sister Mae wants some photos she could use for Liam's coming 6th birthday celebration. This one gets my vote.

A few more family shots and then we were done.:)

I took a few shots of Mae on the way back up to the viewing deck.;)

Ice: Maternity portrait session

Ice and Bryan were my orgmates in college. I also shot their wedding over 4 years ago and did Ice's maternity portraits when she was pregnant with their first child. Late last year, I had the pleasure of photographing their family again, this time just before they welcomed their newest member. Baby Brei was christened just last weekend. Unfortunately, Pete and I weren't able to attend. But in honor of his becoming a new member of the Christian World, I am posting their portrait session today.

We originally scheduled the session about a week earlier in Nuvali. However, just a few days before we were supposed to do the shoot, Ice was put on bed rest by her doctor. Fortunately, she was able to recover fast and we were able to reschedule the shoot before she gave birth. We had to do the shoot at UP Diliman instead though because I had an event to shoot in Q.C. later that day.

The weather on the day of our shoot was generally overcast with some drizzle every now and then, so we didn't get to do any of the sunny photos that I always love.  However, UP Campus has a lot of nice spots to shoot in that we were still able to get great shots.

Here are some of my favorites from the session...

A couple of warm-up shots with the pretty mommy.

This was one of my favorite shots from the session.  Big sister Jem is so photogenic!


She wasn't in the mood to pose for me during the beginning of the session, but we got her to smile for this shot.


LOVE this!

As I said, it drizzled a couple of times during our shoot, so we had to take cover.  We found this little spot on the side of the UP Theater. The light there was awesome!


Ice sent me some photos that she got from the Internet that she wanted to "copy". Most of them were studio shots, but I told her we could try to do some of them and see if they work. I did like how these next two shots turned out.


Open shade could be a photographer's best friend.:)


BREI.


JEM.

One of my favorite shots of Ice.





Jem wasn't in the mood to pose anymore.





But when she was left alone with me for a few minutes, she asked me to take her picture and gamely posed for the camera. :)

She asked me to take her photo in this particular spot. :)


Last few shots.





Of course, I had to take shots of the handsome dad as well.;)

Zoie: Mini portrait session

I photographed Zoie's awesome party a couple of weeks ago. But in late November, I first met this little cutie for her portrait session. To say that Mommy Erica came prepared for this pictorial is an understatement. They arrived at our meeting place in UP with a couple of outfits for Zoie, a ton of accessories (I wish we had the whole day to shoot. I would have wanted to use all of them!), some props, and a crew of "PA's"! Hehehe. Needless to say, I had a blast!

After the photoshoot, I got an email from Erica saying that Zoie wasn't really in the mood during the shoot and that she was hoping we still got good shots. I assured her that Zoie did a wonderful job and that we had a lot of great shots. Here are just some of my favorites.

First one of the cute outfits Zoie wore that day.


Love her eyes!


I actually love capturing photos of kids or babies doing things that, well, kids or babies do.


Zoie looking beautiful in her gorgeous red dress! Mommy and Daddy aren't looking so bad either.;)

It was a bit cloudy when we started, but in the middle of the session, the sun peeked out and we took advantage of it by taking some nice sunny photos.


One of my favorites.


I love getting sun flare every now and then. :)


With Mommy Erica and Daddy JM.

Cute smile from Zoie.

Balloons! I have always wanted to use balloons in one of my portrait sessions. Erica just made my dream come true.;) Here's another one of my favorite shots from that day.

I love these next few shots!





Last outfit change.


Another pretty smile from the superstar of the day.

Of course, I had to take a photo of the whole entourage.;)