Family portraits seize special instances alongside people you love. They become cherished memories that are placed on walls or quilts.
That is why if you plan to start a photography business where you focus on group and family shots, you will need to show your clients in their best light. Obviously, if photography were as easy as choosing a camera and instructing people to ‘say wacky,’ almost everybody would be doing it, right? But, really, it’s not that simple. There are a lot of tiny particulars to it.
This is especially true if your client family has no experience posing in front of the camera. You need to know how to not only take a shot but also how to make them feel relaxed and comfortable. Your goal is to produce natural images. You, as a photographer, should control the situation, and the family provides the mood, the action, and the atmosphere.
This article offers guidance to amateurs and aspiring family photographers on different aspects, including the best gear, unique family portrait ideas, and taking shots during the Golden Hour, among others.
Best Equipment To Take Family Portraits
Like taking baby pictures, your family photography business must take advantage of having a lot of great settings to choose from. For example, the quality of your ISO and shutter speed is not the same for all cameras. Similarly, the kind of lenses you opt determines the aperture or space that you can photograph. Quality lenses are those that enable you to utilize a small depth of field, one that is capable of blurring backgrounds out, which is how to capture a dramatic portrait.
You also need to have a lot of focal points to choose from when it comes to making beautiful family photos. This can get you close to your subjects so you can get their attention, at the same time allowing you to go further away to keep the shy family members at ease.
Family Portrait Ideas
There are plenty of sites on family photography ideas that can easily become photo failures. When you try too hard to remake a photo taken by a seasoned photographer who has been taking family shots for years, you may be on your way to experiencing a disaster.
Try these ingenious family photo ideas that you can create by yourself. You can use these to inspire yourself and incorporate your creative style.
- Grouping subjects into triangles. Family photos can be informal. It shouldn’t always look like a team of people lining up in rows. Instead, think of arranging them in diagonals or triangles. That is one excellent picture idea, and you can easily modify the space to accommodate each family member’s size.
- Consider the pets as family. Including family, pets are a wonderful way to make family photography exciting and non-traditional. Choose a location that’s familiar to them, though, so they would feel at ease and not very difficult to handle. If you’re shooting in a new location, do some play activities for the pet so that they won’t get distracted and restless. Also, using the burst mode on the camera is the best setting for shooting with pets.
- The Golden Hour makes a difference. When you’ve already figured out where to shoot, now consider the when. One of the best times you can take shots is during the golden hour, or just an hour before sunset. This has a spectacular effect on the image you want to create – a soft and warm tone to it. It is also easier to shoot with less equipment when the sun is low. Instruct the family to stand with their backs facing the sun, adding more contrast and less under-eye shadows. Remember to adjust your exposure a little bit, more on the subject and not on the background to prevent the presence of a silhouette.
Natural Family Photos
Photographing natural and raw family images can sometimes become challenging, you are working with people who are not used to being captured often, like models or artists. Often, family members come out stiff for the camera because they’re not relaxed and at ease. Perhaps a good way to prevent this is to spend time with them before taking pictures. You can establish rapport and maybe start a not so serious conversation that can loosen everybody up, making it easier for them and you as well.
Focus On The Family
Family photography should be able to document how the family feels about each other at that moment. Specific moments happen only once or twice, and it would be remarkable to be able to capture those fleeting moments that would mean a lot to the family client, particularly if they were not living in one place, or they are not used to getting together regularly. It’s sort of taking candid shots, but you as the photographer have complete control of the resulting image.
Families are a special group of people that are now interested in getting the best out of photography. Master the art of capturing beautiful moments at unique angles, and they’ll have everything to thank you for.