A glimpse into a summer evening with the Lamarche family

Screens off. Fruit cut. Ping pong. Helmets on.

With eight kids and one on the way, there's always something going on at the Lamarche home. When I arrived the parents weren't home yet, but the kids welcomed me in and I started shooting. Something so great about documentary photography is I can just start working without everyone there.

If there are family members around, I can get great shots of natural, normal, daily life.

Something else that I noticed while with this family is that no two kids are the same! I had a fun chat with mom about it during the session. We kept saying, "You'd think with 8 kids there would be a little overlap of personalities or interests, but each kid is so unique!" That's another thing I love about documentary photography. I get to show off each kid's unique traits. If they were all lined up, in matching clothes, you wouldn't be able to tell me anything about them, except the physical ways they look related.

Another thing mom mentioned was how low stress this was! She wasn't even home when I arrived!! You can't get more low stress than that! With a big family, finding coordinating outfits and getting each and every kid to cooperate at the same instant for the photo is daunting. They did zero prep for the shoot.