To begin, when we arrived at the studio and as we were waiting in the lobby, I looked around the walls of the studio and thumbed through the photographic examples in books, and immediately noted to myself that there were lots of random siblings and families shown but no pictures of twins, triplets, etc. That's cool, I thought, after all, families with multiples are a little more of a rarity, but I would have loved to have previewed some various poses and layouts featuring multiples...I was hoping to gain some ideas from samples of other twins photographs that captured the essence of twins at their best so we could do the same in our photo session. Where were the buddy shot examples which are so ideal for twins, where were the pictures of the arms around the shoulders, leaning on one another further playing up the closeness of twins? Oh, well, I thought, who cares.
When we finally got into the studio for our photo session, the photographer turned to us and asked, "So, what do you want me to do?" It was at that moment, my initial thought was this photographer has no clue about how to photograph twins together, and well, neither did I really...All of my photographs are taken randomly and haphazardly as we live out our daily lives and my photographs often feature blinks, bad expressions and off looks with neither girl looking in the same direction,let alone actually at the camera. I've never had to sit and think about how best to "pose" the twins and our family. Oh, well, I thought again, who cares.
"How about we put the twins on the floor, looking up, and we'll aim towards putting their heads next to each other..." the photographer said to me. I could envision that and it sounded like a cute enough picture so we went with it...again, I'm the farthest cry from a good photographer so what did I know about posing twins professionally for photos? Naturally, I was more than willing to go with whatever ideas the photographer suggested to us.
As it turned out, this pose worked wonderfully for our 3 year old twins, and this pose seemed to work especially well for our girls since they are now able to sit long enough in one position for longer than five seconds even though they're active toddlers always on the go. The girls sat together, looked up to the ceiling, leaned backwards, twisted and turned and as they did, click, click, click, click, the photographer snapped away with each new position and movement.
I wish that I could say that our twins were exhuberantly photogenic in each and every photo shot. They were not. They were at times perplexed, at times completely unininterested, at times annoyed. In the end though, I do think we captured at least a few good pictures of the twins and our family out of the more than 50 pictures that were taken that day!
Now to the real nitty gritty: cost. We went to Sears Photography Studio because I thought I would save us money rather than hiring a boutique photographer. I had a Sears coupon which did come in handy and trim some of our studio session fees, but after the final tallies rang in on the register and after I'd ordered enough photos for all the relatives in the family, I'd still spent over $200--even with the coupon taken into account. Aye, aye, aye. Oh, well, I thought...just look at the proofs, just look at our beautiful little girls...and with a slight, deliberate redirect of my thoughts, I concluded that spending that much money was totally worth every penny!!! After all, preserving the memories of our twins and our family is priceless.
Finally, if you are a relative, or even a very dear, close friend, you should keep an eye out for a mailing with a couple wallet-sized photos to arrive at your home...what else do ya' do when you have more wallet-sized photos than ya' know what to do with...well, you send them to everybody you know, of course!
