I am so behind with blogging my family beach sessions from this summer! This session, from Ship Bottom Long Beach Island is a great way to kick off hopefully blogging quite a few of these! In photos, this looks like it was the perfect evening. Gorgeous golden light fading into some truly spectacular sunset colors, with adorable kiddos. What could be wrong? I have three words for you: Jersey. Black. Flies.

Holy moly did we have flies to contend with for this session! If you’re from the Jersey Shore, then you know that it’s just about nearly impossible to be comfortable on the beach if there is a west wind. We must have had just enough westerly breeze, because there were flies in droves for this session! I’m talking 10-15 flies at a time all over your legs. Despite the flying annoyance, this family made this session look like just another day at the beach!

I also want to add that the sky in these photos is 100% real. I know that it looks almost too good to be true, but I do not fool around with my skies. I’m a big advocate of taking photos that truly reflect the day on which they were taken. I don’t drop in false backgrounds or skies (if you do and that’s your jam – awesome, but it is not my personal jam) because I truly love that my photos are an accurate depiction of the memories that I am capturing. So all the purple-y pink goodness and gorgeous clouds in this session? Real! I love it when mother nature goes ahead and puts on a show for me. After the flies that we had to contend with for this session, I feel she owed us one!

Location: Ship Bottom, Long Beach Island