Ingrid Hunsicker Photography

I remember having our family pictures taken at department stores when I was growing up. Since there were four kids in our family it wasn't an easy task for the photographers to get all of us looking in the right direction and smiling when we were little. They usually resorted to methods like swinging a stuffed toy around or acting like we should care if we made them sad. In my memory they smelled of cologne or perfume, chewing gum, and muted cigarette smoke. I’m guessing that’s not entirely accurate, but isn’t scent closely linked to memory? So it’s possible.  I don’t remember it being a pleasant experience overall. The pictures usually came out okay, though I remember some that had those creepy insets where it looked like part of the family was hovering in a cloud above the rest of them. We’d get one big copy and a couple smaller ones for grandparents a couple weeks later and be done with it.

Here's a pretty awesome family picture we had taken, circa 1988. Stellar. I couldn't find the creepy one with our parents in the thought-bubble.

This December we had some family pictures done by a sweet girl, who evidently had little experience in photographing kids. It was not a pleasant hour running around with them and trying to get them to look in the same direction and to get Cal to stop crying. She didn’t have any tricks to try to get their attention. They looked at the camera at the same time for one picture and she only captured the chemistry between them in one or two shots.

A couple weeks ago my very first blog sponsor, Ingrid, of Ingrid Hunsicker Photography, came and did a photo shoot with Cal and Clark. The four of us walked down to our self-named location, Popcorn Pond, and ran around exploring. Ingrid clearly has a lot of experience with kids in general, (she has two of her own) but also with photographing kids. She is extremely patient and has an arsenal of getting-kids-to-look tricks. She truly captured the boys’ personalities and relationship with each other. Because of their personalities, there weren’t a lot of pictures of them both smiling normally and looking at the camera, but plenty of them both smiling and hamming it up for the camera, which is much more in their nature.

The boys were happy through the entire shoot and only on our way home did they start crying, but that was because they were scared by some brazen geese. The next time we went to Popcorn Pond, the boys said, "This is where Miss Ingrid took our pictures! She has a funny tail on her back." (She had her hair in a braid.)

Without further ado, here are my favorite pictures that she took. Enjoy them and visit her site, Ingrid Hunsicker Photography to browse her work, and especially if you're on the prowl for a quality kids' photographer in the DC Metro area. You'll be happy with her and her work.

Let the Cal and Clark show commence.