The idea of a school or family portrait evokes a particular image in your mind.

Perhaps that of an awkward child posed against a fake fence in front of a fake forest backdrop. Or a shot from the waist up as they jauntily cross their arms and smile at the camera. Or a family grouped together in a meadow during golden hour.

Colorado Springs photographer Carolyn McLaughlin appreciates the concept but wants to move beyond the cult of standard portraiture. Her composite, customized photos are works of art, where children in sailboats ride giant whales, hold clusters of helium balloons while standing on cotton candy clouds, fish off crescent moons, wear gowns made of butterflies, and become friends with baby elephants and giraffes.

“It really is important to capture that childhood wonder because it does go by so quickly,” said McLaughlin, owner of Storybook Images. Find her online at mystorybookimages.com.

“I wanted to do it in a way that is totally different. I wanted to figure out something whimsical, imaginative, fun, where it evokes emotion in the parent when they see it on the wall and evokes emotion out of the child, like wow, that’s me, and it gives them a boost of confidence. I just want love and joy to be on the walls of people’s homes.”

McLaughlin’s photo studio in the basement of her home is the status quo. Backdrops, a tripod, camera, lighting. Nothing out of the ordinary.

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But looks deceive. This is where she creates the bones for her fanciful, fairy tale-like photos that elicit gasps and tears.

On a recent summer morning, a family of four arrives at her front door and piles down the stairs into the studio and its adjoining costume room. Seven-year-old Kenzie Hamill is on deck first, with her 3-year-old brother, Gavin Hamill, waiting in the wings for his turn in the spotlight. She and her parents rifle through racks packed with Sweet Tart-colored dresses, confectionary frocks with full skirts perfect for swishing and for those who harbor secret and not so secret dreams of being a princess.

Kenzie tugs on a lavender number and wanders onto the backdrop, not quite ready for her close-up, but McLaughlin knows how to get what she needs out of a child.

“I try to capture a little bit of their personality, even though it may look like it may not be working and they’re not smiling,” she said. “All I need is one and I can tell when I get it. Sometimes the parents say oh no, they didn’t do well, and they’ll come back and they’re so surprised.”

Having seen examples of McLaughlin’s finished photos, it’s easy to imagine the image she’ll create later on her computer with Photoshop and other tools. In one scene, she has Kenzie hold a pink umbrella and tells her to gaze upwards and imagine butterflies and sunlight pouring down onto her parasol. In another, she tells the little girl to pretend she’s a fairy and looking down at magical lights. And she uses the parents. When it’s Gavin’s turn, she has his dad step into the shot and pretend to be an elephant and giraffe for the final digitized images.

“My daughter got to try half a dozen different dresses and felt like a princess. It was magical and all the things you want for your kid,” said Gundega Stevens, whose 9-year-old daughter Aria was transformed into a giraffe and bunny whisperer in McLaughlin’s photos. “It felt like one of the last times to do a magical photo shoot. And to see the images she created blew us away. My husband and I cried. Aria was thrilled.”

Where McLaughlin stands now, doing what she does, was a hard-won battle. At one point in her life she didn’t think she’d hold a camera again. She didn’t think she’d even stay alive long enough to return to photography.

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After graduating from the University of Colorado in the 1990s, the Boulder native moved to Buena Vista, where her father had opened a rafting company. She worked part time as a raft guide and also owned a photography company that did standard headshots and school pictures. She didn’t really consider herself a photographer. It was just a business she happened to fall into.

A photography conference in 2000 prompted her to reframe what she did behind the camera.

“I saw photographers do amazing, beautifully lit, inspiring photos and I never had eyes to see that before,” she said. “I was like, wow, that’s incredible. Maybe I can learn to be a photographer. So then I was on a mission to learn.”

She explored new ways to use a camera, entered competitions and won a national grand prize and her first digital camera in 2003, for a photo of a red-headed girl. She had a digital copy of it made, then used paintbrushes to paint her.

After selling the business in 2007, McLaughlin and her family moved overseas for 15 years, working with a nonprofit in Russia and refugees in Turkey. Her health slowly disintegrated as one autoimmune disease after another flared up: celiac, Hashimoto’s, Graves. And equally as painful — she gave up photography.

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“It was sort of the death of a dream,” she said. “I thought I was going to lose my life. I was really ill. I could hardly walk. I couldn’t hold a camera. I thought I was done permanently.”

After her kids graduated from college they returned to the U.S. right before the pandemic, landing in the Springs. Once back on home soil, McLaughlin began working with naturopaths. She adjusted her diet, mindset and the way she handled stress, and slowly began to heal.

And just as importantly, she returned to photography, searching for a way to make herself stand out from the herd of photographers and also to serve families.

“If I can give them something that is meaningful, that evokes joy in them every day when they see it on their wall, that’s a meaningful piece for me,” McLaughlin said. “I want to enrich families with treasure, not just another school picture. Most people are just wired that way — we need the family portrait, which we can do, but it’s something different they can try out.”