Laguna Beach , A full seaside pool
In the 1920’s or so, homeowners built walls along the coast of Laguna to create pools that fill up with ocean water at high tide, and offer a seaside swimming pool of sorts created by Mother Nature. My most favorite and visited pool in Laguna Beach is the one I brought both my kids to on a lazy afternoon after school, or a rainy Saturday where sports were cancelled. We would come to this magical place at or after high tide to explore, climb rocks and when the weather is nice, swim in the pool created by the manmade seawall holding in the ocean for just a bit longer. So to share this place with my families, and to photograph them for family portraits has been a great joy of mine. After all, after my career as a photographer is long over, my career as a park ranger somewhere will just be beginning.
For this Floridian family, the one major complaint they have of the Pacific is the cold temperature. These three boys are lucky to swim in waters much warmer than the ones we find here outside of Los Angeles. They did indulge me a bit, and float on my pool ring, but to get them to swim was near impossible.
Each boy in this family has been gifted with a unique color set of eyes, so mom had a great idea to capture that in a creative way. We photographed each portrait using this mask after collecting shells and rocks of our liking. All shells were returned to their original location as tide pools in Laguna Beach are protected for the sake of the coastline.
A big thank you to dad who was on his way to race in the Long Beach Grand Prix, but stopped and explored with us for a bit so we could capture them together as a family. Before he left, we was quite bummed to not get to explore the hidden beach, and when a dad is bummed to leave a photo session, you know it is a great location.
An amazing bonus of using exploring as an excuse to get photos of your kids together, is that the images can double as art around your home, capturing the beautiful backdrop of Laguna Beach and your kids exploring. You leave with a memory of the location, time spent together, and a keepsake set of photos to last through the years.
