Celebrating Your Son With Professional Portraits
As a Gilbert photographer and a mother of a fabulous son, I love taking professional portraits of boys! They keep me on my toes, have a very different attitude than girls, and don’t hate professional pictures nearly as much as they’d like you to believe! Bonus: Moms LOVE pictures of their boys!!! We all know how fast they grow, and that transformation from boy to man seems to happen overnight. At 10, they’re still little boys. The next few years bring a lot of changes, physically and emotionally, which is why it is so important to capture these years! Yes, the best camera you have is always the one you have at the time. So yes, your phone is perfect for those every day photos including concerts, games, and other events. Professional photos though, will capture that inner essence of your son, that little boy that has tugged at your heartstrings all these years, that young man who is becoming much more helpful these days and doesn’t even roll his eyes when you ask for help, and your son…as he eventually becomes taller than you. Let’s make this all about him! His likes, his style, his personality. Believe it or not, It’s also a great way to connect with your teens!
Age 13: He still has such a sweet baby face.
At 13 years old, my son hadn’t hit his growth spurt and while some of his friends were nearing 5’8-5’10”, Trevor was still shorter than me and still looked like a boy. He didn’t have a teenage attitude and as much as I’d heard horror stories of the teenage years, we still hadn’t had any issues. I can actually hear his laugh just looking at this picture, which is something any mom would treasure.
Age 14: The growth spurt.
By the time he turned 14, he hadn’t changed a whole lot but I knew it was coming. I remember this photo shoot since again, I made this all about him…and in return I got a cooperative 14 year old and some amazing memories! He suggested we include his Transformers hat that he just got, and I let him wear his typical jean shorts and t-shirts. Since I prefer not to have big logos or characters for most portraits, I simply grabbed a couple of soft t-shirts from Target and he was fine with that.
Sure enough, 6 months later when we had our own family pictures taken, he was in fact taller than me! That will never change. My little boy will now always be taller than me, and it is kind of a shock. We don’t have a lot of boys in our family, so raising one of my own has been very different! I always knew it would happen but it was still a shock! Just a few months earlier he was a 1/2″ shorter than me! I have many families that want to wait until the braces come off. Braces aren’t a big deal to me though. I actually have huge portraits on my walls during these years, even with the braces. After all, that is part of who they are!
Age 15: He’s becoming a young man.
At 15, he was now at the end of his freshman year of high school, and it showed! His baby face was gone and he was turning into a young man. Before this photo shoot, I even took him to get his hair done hoping it would stay. I never realized how much he cared, but that was a really smart idea. Everyone always takes the girls to the salon, but having your son’s hair styled doesn’t take long and really does help it stay!
Age 16: Where did my little boy go?
Then 16 happened and it was like someone hit me over the head with a brick!!! The braces were off and his confidence was on the rise. My once sweet little boy with the face of an angel, still has a heart of gold and will do anything to help me, but both his looks and his actions have matured considerably! So you can see in just 3 short years he has changed and grown so much! I honestly can’t imagine having only a toddler and preschool pictures, and then not having professional portraits taken until his senior pictures!
Not only does it let him know how much I love him, it gives us some great one-on-one time to talk and for me to remind him how much I love him. I get to gush over him, take him to dinner, and just enjoy spending some alone time with him. I know all too soon he’ll be off to college!
These images remind me of all the wonderful things I love about raising a boy and are an important reminder not to miss out on those in between years. We all have tons of pictures of our babies and all the milestones, and then just some not-so-great school pictures, then before you know it, it is time for senior portraits! So always be sure to remember those wonderful childhood years, tween attitudes, and amazing teen years too!
