Our Luxe Photoshoot

I love taking pictures and of course, having my pictures taken too. Hubby hates it though and gives me the evil eye whenever I ask him to take anything more than 3 times (hey, may slight differences ang angle and poses lol!).  How I wish I can have my photos taken professionally all the time, if it just wasn't that expensive! It really is an investment and I've indulged in it after my kids were born so we can have nice family photos we can treasure forever (see our Stork Studio shoot HERE and our Picture Company shoot HERE).

Anyway, I'm always on the lookout for new photographers and a few years ago, I saw my friend post gorgeous photos of her baby on Facebook. I checked and found out that they were taken by Luxe Photography. When I got pregnant, I was seriously contemplating on doing a maternity shoot but then decided to just do it myself (check out my DIY maternity shoot HERE and HERE). I figured it would be better to have the photos taken when the baby was born. Personally, I prefer taking baby pics when they're a few months old versus newborn since I think they're definitely cuter and their personality will already show. So fast forward to when Skyler was 8 months and we finally had our much awaited photo shoot!

Anyway, what I love about Luxe was their amazing set-ups, and it was honestly my first time to see that in kiddie and family shoots back then. Most of the other studios just use plain backgrounds and simple props (which I also like for the classic look). But now, having a stylist is the norm not just for pre-nup pictorials but also for baby shoots! When I was emailing with the photographer, Wilvin, I said I wanted to do a vintage travel theme. He was suggesting doing it outdoors, but I wanted it in the studio to get the full styling effect. Besides, the weather can be so unpredictable too. We're from the south but we trooped all the way to Quezon City on a weekday just to do this pictorial!

You've probably already seen a snippet of our shoot from our 2014 Christmas card and only now have I finally gotten around to sharing the complete set with you guys! The cost of our shoot was P9,500 and what I liked was that the package came with 50-80 edited hi-res photos. This was such a good deal since when we had our shoot from Stork Studio (which cost about the same), it only came with 10 hi-res files (plus a few print-outs). Can you imagine how hard it was to choose only 10 pics??? Plus, Luxe was more flexible with the time (3 hours) versus Stork Studio which only gives you 1 hour. So even if it was expensive, I felt like I was definitely getting more bang for my buck. :)

When we had our shoot, it was literally just in the living room of our photographer Wilvin. From all the previous pics I saw in Facebook, I wouldn't have guessed it was just taken in someone's sala! Anyway, he was in the process of building his studio then (also in his home), which I know is currently done already. It was kinda weird at first taking pics in the living room with people popping in and out, plus his kids were also there. I guess that would be my only complaint from the shoot if any. It became a challenge tuloy to get Miley and Sabe to pose properly since they just wanted to play with Wilvin's daughter. ;p

Shooting with children is definitely a challenge and you just have to learn to go with the flow. I wanted a pic with all 3 kids together, but we couldn't get a good one since no one wanted to sit still. I had 2 outfit changes planned but by the 2nd change, no one was in the mood anymore! I was expecting Miley to be game and Sabe to be the more difficult one, but it ended up being the opposite. Miley's smile was so "pilit" most of the time so we only had about 5 good shots of her. Sabe meanwhile completely hammed it up and modeled like a pro! Skyler was crawling all over the place and even bumped his head. So I was super happy when I finally got the CD after 3 weeks and saw these gorgeous pics! You wouldn't think by looking at them how hard it was to take haha!

Anyway, sorry for the super long intro! Now brace yourself for a LOT of pics!

And out of all the pics in the CD, there was only ONE family picture! Miley isn't smiling but at least it looks nice. Thank goodness we were able to get a good shot!

I'm super happy with how the pics turned out! Super sulit too since I was able to use the pics for our Christmas card and also Skyler's party. I would definitely love to have another shoot done in the future and I'm getting excited just thinking about what theme to do. I think I should make this a yearly thing, don't you think? ;p