Tampa Family Photographer | Hillsborough River State Park photos

This is the session that almost didn’t happen with rain and storms threatening the entire time we were at Hillsborough River State Park. As a Tampa family photographer, summer and evening storms are no stranger to me. This session though was supposed to take place on a lovely evening. Alas, the rain started just as we journed up to the park, but we decided to give it a go anyway. Then, we ended with some dancing in the rain when the skies finally let go. While I probably would have loved sunshine just as much, this family brought their own sunshine with plenty of preteen girl power and lots and lots of love! The earthy tones really blended into the surrounding; which sometimes is not want you want to do, but the earthy vibe just made sense with this sweet family. They lightened the wardrobe up with a few pieces, too, which helped make sure they weren’t entirely camouflaged.

I adore this mama, she is the talented face behind the camera of Reilly Maguire Photography. She took our family’s photos several times over the years and this year took the most amazing images of the boys and I and my mom as a motherhood gift to myself. You can see some here on Instagram. I will treasure that session so much because the boys have definitely turned into young men in a blink. This past year we really spent so much time together again due to unplanned circumstances and these past few years of togetherness from staying at home during Covid early on, have actually not made us all completely nuts, so the fact that they still wanted to snuggle me at 15, I was so grateful for our session. So in return, here are a few of my favorites. So much love and happiness and no one deserves it more than this gorgeous human!

hands down my favorite from the session, and as her mama and family said “this is absolutely this girl in a photo” - plus a great way to get some movement and play into a session when things are getting a bit stiff is to have a parent surprise their kiddo from behind. Just good to put a gentle warning for the kiddos not to thrown their heads back or kick their dad’s in the sensitive areas ;)

And as if ending in rain isn’t fun, how about a few snaps on film to add some extra nostagia to this session. I had a roll of Kodak 200 that I was looking to finish before I had a newborn session the next week and knew that I wanted to document them on Portra400, so they got extra images on film. While film loves light and sunlight soaked images, I was so pleasantly surprised the film images ended up being some of my favorites from the motherhood portion of the Tampa family photo session at Hillsborough River State Park. Which do you prefer?

slightly out of focus and I could not love this special moment more :)

Head over to my monthly blog circle with fellow photographers from all over and read more about Michele who is sharing about photo sessions at the Tamarack Nature Center.