Family Portraits: Nightmare or Treasured Memory?

I'm sitting here getting my stuff together for a full day of photographing families, and it occurred to me that most people don't really know how to prepare for family portraits - which makes for tense, worried parents and out of control kids.

Clients worry about what kind of clothes to wear, how to do their hair, etc. But I cannot say this often enough to my clients: relax! How you feel on the inside is often how you look in your portraits. If you are tense and stressed because you are worried about how you'll look, then it will show in the final product. Clothes and hair are only part of the equation.

It is my job as the photographer to worry about eye direction, whether or not Johnny is smiling, and keeping everyone in position. The biggest thing you as a parent can do to make my job easier, and by extension your portraits better, is to make it clear to yourself and your kids that the process will go much more quickly and less painfully if you just trust me and follow directions.

I am not saying that I do not want to hear your ideas, opinions or thoughts on what you want out of your portraits, or that I am infallible, because I am not. I do want to hear your ideas, and make your portrait session everything you hope for. But as a Mom, and a photographer, my experience has been that our kids respond to situations how they are taught, and right, wrong or indifferent, they are taught by us every time we interact with them.

Not to be a whiner here, but we get tired of being the target of blame for bad portraits, when our clients walked through our door in a bad mood because of the fight to get out of the house in one piece!

The best way we as photographers can put you at ease is to make you feel welcomed into our studio. The best way for you as clients to make your portraits treasured memories is to lead by example!