Not too long ago a friend and former coworker moved up from Louisiana with her husband and two-year old daughter, Catherine. Her husband’s birthday was last week and she asked me to take photos of Catherine as a gift to him. Since it is August and I didn’t want washed out hazy skies (or intense heat), we had to find a place that was open later than 6pm in order to get decent lighting. Luckily it was a cloudy day and we found some really lovely gardens open until sunset.

Taking photos of Catherine was fun and challenging. She is one of the best behaved two-year olds I have ever met, which made shooting her probably a lot easier than many other children her age. Having said that, two might be one of the trickiest ages to shoot. She is old enough to understand directions like “Smile” or “Look over here,” but she occasionally got antsy and tended to either look down, turn away or have that cheesy smile kids give you when they smile on command.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from the day. Strangely enough most of my them are of her not looking at the camera. It’s probably because she has a more natural expression and isn’t posing so much. More photos from the shoot can be seen here.

We didn’t realize until after the fact that we had broken several rules of the park. 1. Do not walk around barefoot. 2. Do not walk in the flowerbeds. Oops. Sometimes you have to break a few rules for the sake of photos like this . . . right?