When I was a little girl, I had a book about a little village in Sweden and it centered on their May Day celebration and had these lovely illustrations of little girls dancing around a maypole. I have always loved the idea of celebrating spring. It my favorite time of year and if anything is more worthy of celebration than new life and warm weather, I can’t think of it. I had always dreamed of doing a photo session like this one, but I wasn’t quite sure of how to logistically make it happen. Well, as favor would have it, I was visiting my family up in New Hampshire the month before this shoot and my grandparents let me cut down a few of their birch trees to use as decor for our home. I knew that the beautiful white tree would be perfect to turn into a maypole.
I put out the model call for this session specifically asking for little girls from ages 3-8. The beautiful little ladies who came to help me do this looked like a symphonic group of little nature fairies. They had as much fun as I did doing this session, and I think it shows. I took these pictures about 3 years ago, so it’s fun to see how much these little sweeties have grown since then. It is even a little bittersweet to see these pictures, because one of the little girls who is featured is battling a terminal disease and she has changed so much since we did this session (look up Batten Disease for more info or visit http://www.bdsra.org/). That said, I am so so thankful that I was able to do this session. I didn’t have my sweet little daughter, Avenlea, when we did these pictures and I remember pining for a daughter so deeply after doing this.
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