“Don’t even try that with me.”
JB was standing in front of my camera with his saxophone, giving me his very best serious musician look. You know the one. The I’m a senior now and I’m going to look cool and moody in my senior portraits look.
Except I know this kid.
I’ve known him since he was a newborn.
So when he tried giving me one of those fake teenage smiles, I called him on it.
“Don’t even try that with me.”
He started laughing. “I know, I know, I know.”
And there it was. That smile.
The same huge smile I’ve been photographing for eighteen years.
For just a second, I could see all of him at once. Not just the young man standing in front of me, but the baby, the little boy, the ten-year-old who was trying very hard to convince me he was grown, the kid sitting with Santa every Christmas, and the teenager who eventually decided he was much too old for Santa’s lap… until he got old enough and confident enough to think sitting on Santa’s lap again was hilarious.
All of those versions of JB were somehow standing in front of me at the same time.
And WOW, it got me.
We were all babies back then
I met Lindsay and Anthony eighteen years ago when they brought their first baby into Cloud 9 Studios.
And honestly, we were ALL so young. LOL.
They were brand-new parents, and Cloud 9 Studios was only two years old. We were still in our original little studio across the street from where we are now in Wesley Chapel, Florida. I was a baby business!
And I was still figuring a whole lot of this out.
Lindsay and Anthony were Clemson graduates, and Anthony had played football there. Of course, as a Florida Gator, I immediately had something to give them a hard time about. College football gave us plenty to talk about right from the beginning!
They brought Clemson things for JB’s newborn session, including a football helmet. I remember looking at that helmet and this tiny baby and not being completely sure what I was going to do with all of it. 😂
I was still pretty new to newborn photography and posing. We figured it out together, and I’m so glad they trusted me.
I don’t think any of us could possibly have known how much that trust would eventually mean.
We were only going to photograph his first year
Lindsay and Anthony signed JB up for our Baby’s First Year Plan. Back then, that meant I photographed him as a newborn and again at three months, six months, nine months and one year.
We hit it off immediately, and I knew they were going to be wonderful clients. But did I imagine that someday I’d be photographing his senior portraits?
Absolutely not.
I couldn’t think eighteen years into the future! I was running a two-year-old business. At that point, I was just hoping they would come back for the next session.
And they did.
Then they came back for the one after that.
When JB turned one, Lindsay and Anthony brought that Clemson helmet back for his First Birthday Portraits. They wanted to photograph him with it again so they could see how much he had grown since that first newborn portrait.
It was the first time a client had ever asked me to do that, and I loved the idea. Putting those photographs beside each other let us actually see what one year of growing looked like.
I went on to use that idea many times with other families over the years, bringing the same meaningful object back as a child grows and letting it become a little measuring stick for childhood.
It’s funny. I don’t think I ever really stopped to think about where that idea started until now.
It started with them.
I thought I was documenting JB’s first year, but the Williams family was already teaching me something about documenting childhood.
Turns out, we were just getting started.
“I thought I was documenting JB’s first year. Turns out, we were just getting started.”
And then there was Santa
JB has always been a happy kid. You can see it in his photographs.
Even now, when he’s trying to pull off his serious senior musician face, that smile eventually takes over his whole face. He just can’t hide it from me for very long.
And nowhere can I see the different versions of JB quite like I can in all those years of Santa portraits.
When he was little, he played along with all of it. The imagination, the magic, the fun. He especially loved it when his brother and sister were little and they could all be part of it together.
Then he got older.
There came a year when he was too big to sit on Santa’s lap. He would stand beside Santa instead.
You know that age. Suddenly they’re aware of how they look to everyone else. Things they would have done without a second thought a year or two earlier can now be completely embarrassing.
Then, a few years later, something changed again.
JB became confident enough in himself that sitting on Santa’s lap as a great big teenager was suddenly funny.
So back on Santa’s lap he went. 😂
I love looking at that progression now. There’s the little kid who doesn’t think twice about it, the older kid who suddenly does, and eventually the teenager who doesn’t care anymore.
We pay so much attention to the milestones everyone tells us to look for when our children are growing. First steps. First words. First day of school. Driver’s license. Graduation.
But there are all these little ones hiding in between.
The year he decides he’s too old for Santa’s lap.
And the year he decides he isn’t.
“I saw you in a diaper.”
When JB turned ten, Lindsay and Anthony brought him in for portraits to celebrate hitting double digits.
He was big now. Very serious.
Or at least he was trying to be. 😂
I remember him trying to give me that serious look, and I basically told him he wasn’t fooling me. I had seen him in nothing but a diaper.
He almost spit out laughing.
Poor kid never stood a chance.
There is something really wonderful about knowing a child that way, though.
When I photograph a senior I’ve just met, I get to discover who they are right now, and that is one of the things I love about senior portraits. But when I photograph a senior I’ve known his entire life, it’s different.
I see who he is now, but I can also still see who he was.
I know that smile. I remember some of the chapters that came before this one.
Maybe that’s why JB couldn’t ever get away with the fake smile.
I knew the real one.
“When I photograph a senior I’ve known his entire life, I see who he is now, but I can also still see who he was.”
Somewhere along the way, they became five
Of course, JB’s story wasn’t the only one I got to watch unfold.
Lindsay and Anthony had two more children, and we started all over again. Baby Plan. Milestones. Santa. Ten-year portraits. Family photographs.
The studio filled up with more Williamses.
Over the years, I’ve watched them tease each other and squabble the way every family does, but there’s something about this family that I’ve always noticed.
They genuinely enjoy being together.
There’s tenderness there and teamwork and joy. I’ve never been under any illusion that they have some perfect family where nobody gets annoyed and life is always wonderful. I know better than that. LOL.
But you can’t fake enjoying each other.
And they do.
Honestly, I’m a little envious of it.
Their Santa portraits might be my favorite example. Their children have long since grown past the age when Santa is supposed to be something they “believe” in, but that’s not really the point anymore.
They believe in the tradition.
They believe in coming together every year and doing this thing their family has always done.
So they do.
Band competitions had to be worked around. Schedules got more complicated. The kids got bigger. But somehow, every year, we figured it out.
And suddenly, we were here
This year it was time for JB’s senior portraits.
He walked into my studio a grown young man and, for the record, considerably taller than me now. 😂
He brought his saxophone.
I’d never photographed him with it before, even though I’d watched from afar as Lindsay posted about his high school band performances and competitions through the years. We’d even scheduled some of those Santa sessions around his competitions!
Now music was part of the person standing in front of me.
Photographing him felt a little bit like photographing one of my own children. I had photographed my daughter Eryn’s senior portraits the year before, and all those feelings came rushing right back.
I hid a few tears.
But mostly we laughed and had fun. JB showed off with his saxophone, and every once in a while he’d try to sneak that fake smile past me.
Nope.
Eighteen years, buddy. I know better.
Something I didn’t understand eighteen years ago
When I photographed that tiny baby with the Clemson helmet, I thought children’s portraits were mostly for the parents.
Mom and Dad wanted to remember. Mom and Dad wanted the album. Mom and Dad wanted the portrait on the wall.
Twenty years of photographing children has changed the way I see that.
I’ve realized that eventually these photographs belong to the children, too.
I asked JB during his senior session if he remembered coming to the studio every year. He looked at me like I’d asked the most ridiculous question imaginable.
“Ummm, yes, of course. How could I forget sitting on Santa’s lap every year?”
Well… okay then. 😂
Of course he remembers.
This place is part of his childhood. The photographs are too.
Lindsay has sent me pictures over the years of their portraits displayed throughout their home. There are framed photographs on the walls, albums of the children on the shelves and smaller pieces throughout.
JB grew up seeing himself there.
So did his brother and sister.
The more I’ve thought about that, the more I realize Lindsay and Anthony have been quietly telling their children something all these years without needing to actually say it.
You are part of this family. Who you are matters to us. We want to remember this version of you, too.
Eighteen years later
Lindsay and Anthony were both there when it was time to choose JB’s senior portraits.
We talked about those early years and that little studio across the street. We talked about how much has changed since then and, strangely, how much has stayed the same.
They run a business together now. We’ve helped each other in different ways over the years. I’ve participated in events for their family business. Somewhere along the way, this became much more than a photographer/client relationship.
And somehow, eighteen years after they trusted a relatively new photographer to figure out what in the world to do with their newborn and a Clemson football helmet, we were sitting together choosing portraits of that baby as a high school senior.
Lindsay wasn’t crying. She was happy and nostalgic, but mostly she was just incredibly proud of her son and excited that he’s heading off to college to pursue what he loves.
Recently, when I was having my own mom moment about dropping Eryn off at college, Lindsay left me a comment that I keep thinking about:
“It is so hard!!! But we are lucky to have kiddos that are ready to fly the nest!”
She’s right.
And maybe that’s what I couldn’t understand eighteen years ago.
The goal was never to keep him little.
We weren’t photographing JB all these years so Lindsay and Anthony could somehow hold onto the baby with the Clemson helmet. We were photographing him because he wasn’t going to stay that baby.
He was going to grow and change. He was going to become self-conscious for a while and then become confident enough to climb right back onto Santa’s lap because now he thought it was hilarious. He was going to discover music, become a big brother, probably make his parents crazy sometimes, work alongside them in their family business and eventually become this wonderful young man who loves his family and is ready to head off to college.
He’s supposed to fly.
And now Lindsay and Anthony can look back and see every version of the boy who learned how.
I couldn’t have understood any of this when I started Cloud 9 Studios.
“I thought I was building a photography business. I didn’t know some of the babies who came through my doors would grow up in front of my camera. I didn’t know their parents would become people I cared about or that we’d share joys and sorrows, businesses and college drop-offs, and all the messy things that happen during eighteen years of life.”
And I certainly didn’t know how much it would eventually mean to have a family come back year after year and trust me once again to tell this part of their child’s story.
I know now.
Because someday a newborn portrait and a senior portrait can sit side by side, and suddenly you can see what was happening during all those years between them.
A child was growing up.
And all along the way, he was growing up loved.
Want to document your child’s story as they grow?
You don’t have to know today what eighteen years of photographs will look like. Lindsey and Anthony certainly didn’t when they first walked into my studio with baby JB and a Clemson football helmet.
You just start with who your child is right now.
At Cloud 9 Studios in Wesley Chapel, Florida, we photograph children and families through the milestones everyone celebrates and all the little stages in between. If you’d like to begin documenting your child’s story, I’d love to meet your family.
A Few Questions Parents Often Ask
Why use the same photographer as your child grows?
A photographer who knows your family begins to recognize more than what your child looks like. Over time, we learn their real expressions, personalities, relationships, and the little things that remain the same even while everything else changes.
That history can make each new portrait session feel like another chapter of the same story.
What ages are important for professional childhood portraits?
There isn’t one perfect schedule. Some families photograph the traditional milestones like newborn, first birthday, school years, and senior year, while others create traditions that are completely their own.
I especially love the ages we don’t always think to celebrate, like turning ten, losing those last traces of babyhood, or the years when a child’s personality and interests really begin to emerge.
Why display children’s portraits in the home?
Over the years I’ve realized family portraits aren’t only for parents to remember their children. The children grow up seeing those photographs too.
A portrait on the wall or an album on the shelf becomes part of the visual story of their family: I was here. I belonged here. This part of my life mattered.
About Jeanine McLeod
Jeanine McLeod is the founder and Chief Magic Maker at Cloud 9 Studios, a children’s and family portrait studio in Wesley Chapel, Florida. For more than 20 years, she has photographed thousands of children and families throughout the Tampa Bay area, documenting everything from newborn days and first birthdays to childhood milestones and senior year. Her work centers on a simple belief: children deserve to grow up surrounded by reminders that they were deeply loved.
Jeanine McLeod is the owner and lead photographer of Cloud 9 Studios, a full-service photography studio located in Wesley Chapel, Florida, just north of Tampa.
For almost 20 years, Jeanine has specialized in family, children, and baby photography that celebrates the joy and connection of family life. She’s best known for her storytelling approach to first birthday and milestone sessions, creating portraits that capture love, laughter, and the magic of childhood.
Jeanine’s mission is simple — to go through life with her clients, documenting each chapter of their family’s story through beautiful, heartfelt images.
When families search for first birthday photos in Wesley Chapel or family photographers near Tampa, Cloud 9 Studios is where the experience becomes as meaningful as the portraits themselves.
