We had our family photos taken by Emily at a botanical garden in Maryland a little over a year ago. At that time the flowers hadn't bloomed yet but you'd hardly notice that because the main focus of the photos (us) turned out so well.
At that time, our 1.5 year old son David - being the shy little guy that he was, it was hard at first to get him to smile and he would run scrambling to hide behind my husband or me. So in our case, the best approach in which she automatically took was to capture us in our nature state engaging with our son. She didn't force the shots, but instead she'd quietly observe us interacting with David and candidly take the shots needed. I remember how she'd constantly move around us to get the best angle or run ahead of us to take shots of us walking or of David running playfully towards us. Then after awhile, he'd open up and then Emily was able to take more shots of just our son. Before working with Emily, believing I was unphotogenic and that I only looked somewhat decent in posed shots normally taken at a studio, somehow as we were out and about being ourselves in the garden Emily had stealthy captured us perfectly in a variety of positions before we'd know it.
There were other times when she'd lead us to particularly nice spots or views in the garden, and she'd have us positioned in certain ways which gave the shots an even more amazing "natural" quality. We most definitely enjoyed the shoot (it was relaxing and seemed like we just took a nice stroll through the garden) and were very pleasantly pleased with how the pictures turned out. Emily is professional and quite responsive to our needs which we value and we would highly recommend her again (especially to anyone with small children). And actually if she's visits the Washington DC area again, we'd like to have her take photos of our 6 month old baby boy.