Oh Sweet Cayden! I have been photographing this little guy since he was an infant. I had done all his milestone sessions and when I moved 2 years ago I did not think I would see them again. Dad is in the military and I thought the chances of them being stationed close to where I live now, might be slim, but guess what?! To my surprise, Cayden’s mom gave me a call and said we moved and we are only 2 hours away from you, what can you do? I said I can happily meet you in Vero Beach which puts me about 1 hour closer to you if you want to meet me? So we planned Cayden’s 3 year milestone session for downtown Vero Beach. When I arrived mom told me that Cayden had recently been diagnosed Autistic. I work with many kids with Disabilities, Autism being one of them. As Autism looks different for everyone, I knew that the best thing to do was to let him lead the session. So I made a lot of suggestions, but I never asked him to sit and pose for any images. I also knew that the traditional “say cheese” was not going to produce a smile nor direct eye contact, so instead we played and followed him around stopping where he wanted to stop and doing what he wanted to do. In the end he only had one melt down and that was when we sad the session was done, so overall a pretty great experience.
