Susan Solo – Photographer | Traveler | Adventurer

Category: families & kids

  • Take a Picture of Me Doing THIS!

    This is honestly one of my very favorite families to photograph! I love the kids’ energy, and despite having all of that fire, their parents are so cool and calm. It’s amazing. They really are good kiddos, and they’re quite sweet with each other amidst the chaos of being kids. Here’s everyone, three generations:

    And here are the boys in a series I call, “Miss Susan! Take a picture of me doing THIS!” Once we started climbing and running around (you know, fun stuff!), the boys were all into the photo session.

    Just some sweet pictures of the two sets of brothers:

    Now, truth be told, this one was NOT into the photo session that day. And I get that, and it’s totally okay. I know, there are so many things going on in the world that are more interesting than I am! So I tried to just let her do her thing, and her thing was playing in the water on this rock formation:

    Kim/Jason, Jen/Tom, Linda/Keith + crew, thanks so much for hanging out with me again! I’m pretty much in awe of your awesome families. As someone who is on the fence about even being able to take care of a dog, I’m just so amazed by how well you take care of all those amazing kids in addition to a few four-legged kids as well. 🙂 You guys rock!

  • Melissa & Land – Expecting!

    You may remember Melissa and Land on the blog last year? Well this year they have some wonderful news and I was thrilled to meet up with them again to capture this exciting time! Yesterday our nation’s capital blessed us with a taste of summer two days early in the form of 95 degrees and humidity that you could taste. So although our original plan was to take some photos outdoors with a bit of a nature feel, we opted to start the photos indoors and to wait for cooler temperatures. Luckily the city has plenty of indoor locations with a/c, and we had fun finding a few spots in and around the Smithsonian museums. The Museum of Natural History was so packed, but we did grab this first photo that I love:

    And then we strolled over to the Museum of American History next door for this other image that I love!

    Nope, not on the metro – still at the Museum of American History:

    Once it was cool enough to venture outside (thank goodness for a bit of a breeze!), we walked over to the Sculpture Garden:

    Life imitating art? This makes me smile: You look amazing, Melissa!

    We did manage to work a little nature into some of the photos after all:

    Is this kid going to be goooooorgeous, or what?! Congratulations, Melissa & Land! You are both going to be absolutely amazing parents. I can’t wait to see and hear all about him/her (I don’t want to spill the beans in case anyone wants it to be a surprise!) when he/she gets here. 🙂

  • Happy New Year!

    As a side note before anything else, when is the official cut-off date for saying Happy New Year? Since it’s my first post of the year, I think I can safely say it, but I’m still wondering about the official rule.

    So, have I really not posted since the new year yet?! I guess I can believe it – I’ve been swamped! I’m desperately trying to catch up from the holiday slack and will be back soon with more regular updates. In the meantime, I’ll post one of my favorite images from a quick family session I did on New Year’s Eve. This is my friend Coelle and her brother, and this was all their idea (perfectly executed – look at that air!):

  • Family Photo Attempt

    Last weekend I met up with Jenn and Stephen to attempt to take a quick family picture with their two kitties. I say attempt, because the kitties didn’t end up being very cooperative. It turns out that because they don’t really like each other, they don’t really want to be in a group photo either. So rather then force them and end up with tons of scratches, we took a few pictures of just the human part of the family instead:




    Jenn and Stephen just recently celebrated their one-year anniversary, and this was Stephen’s anniversary gift to Jenn. (Nice job, Stephen!)

    And we couldn’t leave Max and Boney out of the photo session completely! We took a few individual pictures. Here is Mr. Max looking rather peeved still. And I don’t think he likes his outfit:

    And here is Boney, who doesn’t love the camera but I managed to sneak this one in anyway:

    For the record, I adore all animals and am super patient with them! I’ve had some successful people + pet photos in the past, including pictures of just Jenn and Max, but this was my first try with two cats that don’t get along really well and don’t want their picture taken. I guess you can win ’em all. 🙂

  • Fall Family

    Go ahead, tell me how absolutely adorable this family is! When Ashlee contacted me about doing some family portraits in October hoping to have fall colors in the background, I was expecting to be able to accomplish that fairly easily in the middle of October. So we scheduled a time to meet at Gulf Branch Nature Center in Arlington, but for some reason the leaves there haven’t changed colors yet! We’re all bright reds, oranges, and yellows out here in the Dulles area, but not so much at that park. No matter – Ashlee’s family came completely decked out in the colors we had hoped to find, so it was perfect! Here are a few of my favorites:


    Jackson is at an age where he can follow directions really well and he was so good at giving me lots of smiles. So handsome!

    Sweet Miss Kennedy is at the age where there is so much to discover about the world, and there were a lot of other fascinating things going on around the park other than me with my camera. But I love these expressions. And isn’t her outfit so cute?!

    And this is Miss Lucy! She woke up from a nap to find me there with my big camera, but she was so good, too.

    We were all making owl noises here, hence the “whooo whooo” faces.

    I seriously couldn’t get over how cute their clothes were, right down to the socks!

    A couple of sweet moments with Dad:





    Towards the end of our session, Kennedy let me know that she wanted to “do it again” so it turns out she loves to model after all! We grabbed this last fun one just before we finished up.