Let's chat about my family sessions...
I feel like a lot of people don't fully understand what a family photography session is or what it entails. For me, first of all, I consider my style documentary. What that means is, I capture moments as they happen in real time, with minimal direction given to my clients. Now that's not to say that I don't assist in adjusting kiddos or hands, etc if they are looking sort of out of place. But typically what I do is have my family say seated for one part of the session. We'll get the "christmas card" image of everyone looking and then we move on. So if you'll see in the image above me, and then the first 4 images below, those are all in the same exact spot, sitting in the same position. But after we got the smiling image, I asked them to tickle each other and play together without looking at me. And those images were what we captured. A beautiful moment of dad tickling his older son and being playful, and mama bear cuddling with the baby of the family, and then kissing big sis.
Then as we move to the wood bridge, I again just had the family sit as they were comfortable and how they would normally sit if, say, they were watching fireworks. So I have them clumped up together snuggling, and then I have dad say something silly to the whole family. We got some laughs and silly faces from there. Then I moved on to individual images of the kids, both with their parents and without. I also allowed the 3 kids to just be themselves. They wanted to play with baby brother and I thought that was more important to document than having all three of them staring at my camera.
And the last section of images was when I had them all stand close together and I gave them a few prompts but mainly told them to just play with the kids. So Mama was playing with the two older kids doing this airplane fly with their hands. And dad was throwing baby in the air and catching him. And then we got baby on dads shoulders and let them all interact in a silly way that way.
By guiding them a little but also allowing them to be themselves, I think you really create a genuine picture of what their family actually looks like. I want to capture how you family really looks at this moment in time. The joy of it, the chaos of it, the silliness of it. Because it also holds a place in a mamas heart. These special moments are even more special when on a day to day basis we are running around wondering if we're good enough? (Because let's face it, every mama has thought that once or twice!) And then you look back on these images of your family laughing and playing and having fun and you see the smiles on your kiddos faces, and you know you are definitely doing something right. <3
