2 Year-old Family Photos

I really struggle with planning family photos.  Little Miss often has a smile on her face, but immediately removes it when a camera is nearby.  If she's doing something really cute and you bring out your phone and dare ask her to smile, she'll say, 'no,' look away and then immediately stop whatever she's doing.  I thought her one-year photos were cute, but not special and I really analyzed why that might be.  Besides not wanting the camera around, we also took her to a new place that she wasn't familiar with, tried to stay out of the camera and didn't give her much to interact with.
I really wanted to do 18-month photos, but that just never happened and time just slipped away.  Finally, I decided that for our next photos we would just do a lifestyle shoot, or capture her doing something she's already used to doing in a place she's used to being.  Our local park seemed like the most logical spot.  We played like usual and while the lighting never worked to get a picture of her favorite activity- swinging- we were able to capture some stunning photos.  Having puppy there and just hanging out doing the things we were used to seemed to do the trick and Little Miss Photogenic became more relaxed as the shoot went on.  Here are just a few of the great ones captured that day.