Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day – Photographer Style!

April 22nd was Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work day. The kids and I (Jason) decided that it would be a perfect day for us to go on a photo shoot. It was not a day to slack off – that’s for sure! The kids had a fantastic opportunity to see what a day in the life of a photographer was all about.

We started the day, of course, at Starbucks – an essential part of a photographer’s workflow. The morning was a bit dreary – rainy and foggy. As is customary in Colorado, we just waited about an hour for the sun to show up. As the clouds broke, we headed to Bear Creek Lake to scout out interesting locations. We didn’t have an agenda, we just looked for a ‘cool’ location to start shooting. The area was empty – no cars, very few people… perfect.

There was a long stretch of road that seemed perfect for us to start our adventure. We brought two Nikon D700′s… one for each of them. We set up some strobes, remote flash triggers on the cameras, and the kids started firing away. In total, the kids took about 200 pictures. It was loads of fun.

We headed home for lunch and editing. They took turns picking their favorite images to edit. Each of them chose one of their favorite images for us to have printed on canvas and hung in their room.

It was an amazing day. As wedding photographers, there isn’t an opportunity for the kids to see us at work. They definitely get to see the results. Watching them look around for interesting things to photograph was so cool to observe. (It also meant a lot that they took great care with very expensive photography gear). I have always loved photography and have taken thousands of pictures of them. In this scenario, they were the photographers… they were able to experience the joy of making images. They learned about light and shadow, composition, creativity, and spontaneity.