I recently had a call from a young mother that wanted to have photographs for her daughter's 3rd birthday. She had contacted me through my Ariniko Artistry Facebook Page. We scheduled a session and just like I do for all my clients I asked how would she like her daughter to be photographed. It turns out this little girl was having a Where the Wild Things Are themed birthday party, but would also like other birthday themed props. Mostly she wanted great photos of her little girl for her birthday.

As the session date got closer, I started really thinking through this theme. I pulled up images from my computer and began assembling props for this shoot. I had some really great ideas but sometimes setting up an area at the studio is more difficult than say, bringing the subject into a "jungle" looking area outside. Unfortunately our weather was off and on snowstorms and in fact we postponed our first scheduled session because of the threat of a severe snow maker. Also she wasn't available to shoot until close to 7:00 p.m. pre daylight savings which meant it would be dark outside at the time of her session. I had to make the studio work.

This is what I created:

An actual stump, carved out in the center so it wasn't too heavy. I then took some fabric I had and created a seat for the stump. I cut out a crown in gold cardstock as well as a moon and stars. On one of our warmer days I went to my yard and found grapevines. They grow all over our yard. I also pulled down some climbing ivy. A couple of random branches finished off the background. The last thing I made was the ceptor. Had the little one shown up in a "wild things" outfit she would have looked like she popped straight out of the book!

The day of the shoot I brought in all my props and set up the themed set first. This was the final look.

I think she liked all the props and sat perfectly for each shot.

At one point her mom had her singing the song from the movie too.

I also set up a yellow backdrop with orange flowers. Although I hadn't talked to the client about clothing color, her cute dress worked perfectly with this backdrop.

The last area I put together was balloons. I think it was while playing with the colored balloons that she really came out of her shell. Which allowed us to get some great candid shots of her too!