Sometimes you get lucky. I was hired to create some family portraits for the Henri family. They were gathered for a family reunion, and I believe there was a wedding, and someone was going to be leaving on an LDS mission shortly. And because of the crazy schedule noon was the only time they could have time for family photographs. The best light is normally not at noon. But you work with what you have and fortunately the day was overcast, woo hoo!
The Henri Family with a mission statement
Overcast meant we could work with my portable lighting kit and make everyone look there best. In the above photograph the family also wanted to wear yellow bandanas and have a religious quote at the bottom. I did have to do a bit of head swapping from one photograph to another. It also helps that I took a LOT of group photographs. I could pull one person’s head to replace an image where they blinked. In large groups like this no one is perfect all the time. It does take a lot of time in Photoshop to get this to work.
The Grandparents of the whole family
We start with the big group and then we photograph the individual family units and get mom and dad and they kids. We move and quickly as possible because the attention span of children does not exist.
Family Photography in smaller units
Groups of families for photos
And it is always fun to get all the grandkids in one photograph. Grandma and Grandpa love these kinds of photos. And you may need to do this every few years since new kids show up on a regular basis in some families.
All the grandkids pose
Some individual portraits
And if the family likes silly photos, we shoot the silly photos. Sometimes you need a moment to think of what you are going to do… these kids knew exactly what they were doing. They had been trying to be silly for the whole photo shoot.
If you’re photographing kids you need a fun one or something silly
And we were really lucky to have overcast skies. Otherwise we would have to be really creative to avoid the harsh sunlight of noon day sun. Shade can be hard to find and manage the shadows on people’s faces. Hooray for luck!
Some individual portraits
