A few weeks ago, we did a family photo shoot with Heidi Neufeld Photography. The last time we had a family photo shoot was about eight months ago when we did a family portrait session for our holiday cards. As I’m sure many parents understand, we spend most of our time behind the camera capturing all of the adorable things that our son does and we often forget to take pictures of ourselves with him. In preparation for our family photo shoot, I started making a list of tips for family photos and I’d love to share these tips & some of our photos with you!
Tips for Family Photos:
Avoid identical outfits! You don’t want to end up on one of those Awkward Family Photo sites, do you? I didn’t think so! Coordinating outfits, colours and patterns is an excellent idea but all wearing identical outfits in different sizes is not. Some fun ideas would be to all wear fall colours for a fall photo shoot or all wear casual outfits for a photo shoot at a beach. For our family photo shoot, we decided to go with a mixture of blues and greens with stripes, plaids and solid colours.
Don’t take yourself too seriously. This tip is even more important to remember when you’re planning a photo shoot with children. As the mother of a two year old son, I knew that we wouldn’t be able to get him to pose and sit still many pictures. Rather than become frustrated, we just played with him and captured more natural family photos. Heidi understood the challenges that may come along with photographing an energetic toddler and she was great with making him feel comfortable in the photo session.
Choose a setting that’s right for your family. Do you love the outdoors? Are you a huge fan of a particular sports team? Does your family have a hobby or interest that you want to include in the photo shoot? Be sure to talk to your photographer about location ideas. They can usually offer some great suggestions based on your interests and the type of photo shoot you want. Heidi was able to suggest the perfect location for our family photos. It was a beautiful and quiet area that had a lot of space for my little guy to run around.
Talk to the photographer about your vision for the session. Is there a particular location you want to use? Are there props you want to bring along? Are there certain poses you want to capture? Make sure the photographer understands what you want out of the session so he or she can make a plan ahead of time. Before our session, I had a conversation with Heidi on the phone where she asked me a few questions about our family, our interests and the style of shoot we wanted.
Clarify expectations. Are you ordering photos for holiday greeting cards, for an invitation or another special event? Make sure to discuss this with your photographer along with a reasonable timeline that you can both agree to.
What are your best tips for family photos?
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*Disclosure: Heidi Neufeld Photography offered this photo session in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed here are my own.