David Gurry might have won the award for best Mother’s Day Gift ever this year. On a recent visit to their vacation home in Suncadia, David decided to hire a family photographer to update their family portraits and surprise his wife Lisa for Mother’s Day.  A google search for a family photographer in Suncadia led them to me, and after a glowing recommendation from a previous client of mine (thank you Matt!) we planned the entire session in secret as a surprise for Lisa.

Why this is the right time to update family photos:

“The last time we did family photos was five years ago, and we were in a different phase of life. My children have grown up so much since then.  My daughter, Lauren, is going away to college and I am not sure when we will have this opportunity again.  For us, the idea that we could come to our property & get creative with family photos without needing to pack up our family, or scout out new locations, was very appealing.”

Creating a comfortable environment for portraits is important for any person whether they’re 3 or 13 or 33. But I have a particular passion for capturing families with special needs children.  Taylor, 13, brought something extra special to the session. Capturing authenticity is so important and sticking to her environment really helped achieve that. Not to mention having an amazing Nana on speakerphone the entire time. Nana truly was the real MVP of the session and brought out some of Taylor’s best smiles.

Their oldest two children, Jake and Lauren, were rock stars the entire session. Even the family pet got in on the action! I love that we were able to capture the family in so many combinations to highlight the relationships between parent and child, siblings, and of course a beautiful portrait of each child. The family chose to highlight their experience in a 12×12 heirloom family album, which is a beautiful way to display the multitude of portraits we were able to create, and have planned a wall portrait for their home as well.

The Gurry Family | Family Photographer in Suncadia