Helpful Tips To Ensure A Fun Successful Family Shoot

Making A Family Shoot Fun

Many photographers worry about family photography. They can feel intimidated and unsure of how to pose family members. Finding the right location and the right time of day. Ensuring that the light is even and everyone is in place and comfortable. Including you; the photographer. Families expect us photographers to know what we are doing and very much like a wedding, you will have to semi-direct how the shoot goes in giving people guidance on how to sit and “behave” so to speak.  I wanted to put together a few fun ways to make sure the shoot goes well! I have learned a lot over the years. Going from dreading family shoots to loving them.

Helping Your Client With Clothing Choices

Clothing choices are essential! You definitely want to help coach your family on what to wear. Better yet, what not to wear! I will usually tell my families to look around at furniture stores. Yes, this sounds a little crazy, hear me out!! I like a family to all blend and then have one main accent color. If you look at any home magazine you will see so many varieties of colors that go really well together and have that accent color to make it “pop”. Never suggest everyone wear the same clothing, not all jeans and all white shirts. This just will end up looking like a JC Penny portrait and you want your work to stand out! Staying away from whites and blacks is a great idea. Remember the time of year it is and try to keep the colors within that season of colors. Personally, I love more muted and light colors with just one pop of color. No one wants Dad to show up in his Steelers jersey while mom is rocking her best dress.

Make Your Client Comfortable

This all comes from you! Yes, you!! It is so important that you go to the shoot feeling confident and knowing what to expect. I like to ask ahead of time who is in the family and what ages are the children so I know what props I may need to take with me to help it go more smoothly. I also like to know what age little people I will be chasing around that day. Asking about the child/ren can really help because you are ahead of the game if you know they just LOVE Disney or Tonka Trucks! These are little tricks you can use to engage in a conversation with the children. It will help them warm up to you and make them think “hey, I kinda like this one, she knows all about Disney” In other words do a little research. Be prepared! When you meet your clients, be friendly and warm and tell them you will make this as painless as possible for them! A side note, I never get down level with a child, like squatting down to their level.  I always stand above them, I may lean in to talk but I never get down on eye level with them. Kindergarten teachers are very alike and something about the child’s psyche means you are more authoritative if you stand taller. This doesn’t scare them it just keeps them from walking all over you, usually!

Posing, The Dreaded Posing Of Families

So, everyone has been prepped and everyone is dressed and you are standing face to face with your clients. Again, make them smile! Make them feel comfortable, tell them how great they all look and how much fun you are going to have with them. There are so many ways to pose a family. Let me tell you the ways that I pose mine. Starting out always with the standing poses. I will have the family stand together, comfortably and mostly have dad on one side, mom right beside him and the children in front of them. Try to keep in mind the height of the children and pose them according to that. Remember you want to see faces. You can always ask mom and dad to lean in. The idea being that if there was a piece of glass in front of them they would all have their noses touching it. Trying to keep them on the same focal plane, as much as possible. Then there is the walking pose. Have them hold hands or put the baby on dads shoulders and walk both away and to the camera. It’s best if they are talking to each other and not necessarily looking at you. I also do the squatting down pose. Where everyone is squatting down and smaller children can stand up! Keeping them all relatively at the same height. Then comes the sitting (dads usually hate the sitting one) ha! I try to make it as comfortable as possible for them. My main rule is I don’t want to see any spaces between anyone. Everyone cuddles in close.

Tips And Tricks

My bucket of tricks that I have collected over the years! As much as I love a great family shot of everyone ideally looking at the camera; I also love candid shots, so I mix it up. My first shots will always be of everyone looking toward me. Explaining to parents and older children to keep looking at me and smiling while I am attempting to get the little one to look at me. I make rude sounds, whistle, have a squeaky toy, call her name and also yell out “ouch”. This will normally get their little attention.  Let’s face it you really only need a good couple of seconds to fire off a good shot! A lot of times I will sing the ABC song and mess it up and children laugh out loud at me. There are times I pretend to fall over and again you get that natural laugh.  Sometimes, when dad isn’t smiling I will say something funny about his sports team (remember your research – this really helps) I will tell daddy off!! I like to get everyone looking at me to start every pose. Then I have one rule. DONT look at the camera or me!! I tell families to look at each other, smile, talk, tickle, hug, and let them be themselves. These are by far my favorite. And lastly, if you can shoot with a long lens like a 200mm. This way you are not all up in the families faces and it gives them a chance to breathe! I shall leave you with a few images from a recent family shoot! Hopefully, this article will help you with your next family session. Oh!! I do most of my family sessions outside, about an hour before sunset 🙂