Extended family sessions are always special to me to photograph, whether your family lives close or haven't seen each other in years. I don't have any siblings, but I have a ton of cousins on my dad's side. I remember a few summer vacation and reunions with extended family and making memories. I was lucky enough to live in the same state of nearly my entire family for the first 18 years of my life, so I saw them all very often. But once I left for college and started my life after my visits back home became very few and far between. Life takes us on a journey and sometimes that means we have to move to new places for new opportunities. 

When this family submitted their inquiry the first thing I noticed was the Maryland area code of the phone number, and I thought, I should just call. I spoke with Cesar on the phone and we chatted about sharing that similarity of living in Maryland. His family has now spread out over three states and their parents still living in the Philippines. This meant so much to me, that I would be able to capture these generations together again.  

They all decided to meet up in Charleston for their Easter and Spring Break, rented a big house and even brought the family dogs! I should mention, this was the most miserable Easter weekend I've ever experienced in Charleston with storms and a temperature drop of 30 degrees OVERNIGHT! It was wild. We had to improvise so I encouraged them to find another time we could all get together and it seemed the ONLY viable option was the exact night one of his sisters was arriving to Charleston from North Carolina. It was risky, but I knew we may not get another opportunity to get this family all together for a real traditional portrait over the weekend, and who knows when they might get that chance again?

I should also mention that because of the time and date change I also had to rethink our location entirely. Given the TBD starting time of 6pm with 16 people and 2 dogs it just didn't seem feasible anymore to accomplish in Historic Downtown. Historic Downtown's White Point Garden is lovely, but on a Friday night you'll be lucky to find parking around the Battery and having to deal with a bunch of off-leash dogs also wasn't ideal. The location I decided on was Hampton Park and to be completely honest, this is probably a much prettier option anyway! The lighting here in that evening hour ended up working perfectly, and the roses were all completely in bloom making for such an elegant backdrop. Oh, and I another amazing tid-bit, ROSE is a family name for them as well, it was meant to be!

All in all, it was an amazing session and I felt all the love. I mean these cousins were so silly yet so loving to one another, they loved to laugh and be silly. This is what reminded me of all the amazing vacations I had with my family growing up and I hope these images live with them for the rest of their lives in support of those great memories.