Earlier this week, we featured a Winter sibling session in Arizona but the reality is that Winter is a difficult time to photograph outdoors because of the cold. MPH Photography gives us a great example of what you can accomplish by bundling up and approaching a session via a lifestyle approach combined with portraits of the family.

MPH Photography is located in Toronto, so be sure to read her tips below for photographing in the COLD.

From MPH Photography: I live in a city that gets really cold and tends to have a lot of snow and up here in Toronto. Most of us tend to hibernate during the long cold winter months. If I could combine Christmas with summer, I’d have a perfect season. Since that isn’t the case, I make the best of it and dress up with 2 pairs of pants, lots of sweaters and a coat, gloves, boots, a hat and scarf and even ear muffs. Plus, when I’m working I actually get pretty warm and toasty and at times don’t even feel the cold. That said, it’s always good to find a place to start off the session where its warm. I have photographed Amy since she was pregnant with her little one Maya and every year we try to come up with new places to shoot.  I was a bit early for the session and so we went to Starbucks and I called Amy and told her to meet us there.  I’m glad I did that because the lighting was awesome, so I decided to start shooting there. It’s great to try to get a few shots of the family members without their heavy coats on, we grabbed a hot chocolate and then we were off. We have a large Christmas tree and an ice rink downtown, and I always look for interesting lines and colourful backgrounds when shooting. It’s great for it to snow during your winter session at some point, but if not, you can always add snow later ;) as I did with a few of these images. The idea is for it to be fun, a memorable time for the family during Christmas and try to stay warm by ducking in and out of places, malls, coffee shops, cars, anywhere to warm up for a min or two.  I try to capture their spirit on film so they can look back on these images and remember how much fun they had that day. The parents wanted to do this session since last year when they saw another winter session I had done and we planned this for almost a year. In the end they couldn’t have been more thrilled and not many can say they were brave enough to face the cold but this family did and they are very happy with the results.

// By MPH Photography // Follow on Facebook //