8 Essential Tips for Your Family Photo Session

Congrats on booking a Family Session! These relaxed, slow-paced sessions are perfect for kiddos who could use some breaks for snacks and burning off energy. But here’s the deal… how chill these are is dependent on a few factors. Check out the 8 most important tips for having a successful Family Session below! 

1. Get Kiddos Excited About Your Session

My first piece of advice is to get your kids excited about your upcoming Family Session. You can do this by saying things like, “We get to go to a park, have fun, and get our photo taken by a nice lady!”

Framing this as a positive, fun experience can work a lot better than the “you’d better behave” route. This can help make for natural smiles and an all-around awesome experience for everyone involved.

2. Plan Ahead

Prep Outfits in Advance

There are a few things you can do ahead of time to have a better chance of a great session! One of these things is making sure your outfits are all picked out ahead of time. You can check out my updated Family Style Guide for tips on fit, patterns, colors, etc.! 

Trying to pull a cohesive mix of clothes together last minute is a recipe for stress. Leave plenty of time for getting ready and make sure you have everything ironed and ready to go at least a day in advance. Wrinkles in clothes show up weirdly easily in a photograph, so please do make sure to iron or steam! 

Get Unenthused Individuals on board

Here’s another incredibly important tip—have someone in your family who isn’t stoked about this upcoming session (I’m looking at you, dads)? Please ask them to cheerfully participate! It may not be their first choice of activity for the weekend, but it’s one that’s going to bring joy for many years to come.

Reluctancy shows up in photos a lot more than you might realize (sometimes even more than a screaming toddler). Forty-five minutes is less than an episode of The Wire! Remind them how quickly it will go and how much better the photos will be if they’re happily participating.

3. Make Sure Everyone Is Well-fed and Rested

The two main factors that can make a session go awry tend to be how hungry and/or how tired a kiddo is during the session. Once a child feels either of these things, it can be impossible to cheer them up. 

Please make sure no naps are skipped and snacks are had beforehand! But make sure these are stain-free snacks so nothing shows up on clothes or teeth in your images.

I also always recommend bringing small bites (think cereal or goldfish) to have on hand when needed. A larger snack can (and has) cause tears if you take it away from them while they’re working on it.

4. Go About Your Day Normally

I often hear parents say, “It’s so weird, they wouldn’t nap today,” which often results in a cranky kiddo during their session. The extra energy in the home preparing for a session can cause a child’s routine to feel out-of-whack (thus causing too much excitement to take their normal nap). 

As mentioned earlier, it’s super important to make sure kids are well-rested for their session so we have the best chance at joyful, natural moments to capture.

That’s why it’s so important to stay calm and keep your day as close to normal as possible. I will always be amazed by how easily kiddos pick up on stress and feel it themselves! 

Another thing that can help these be less stressful is arriving early to your session. Though parks in the Seattle area are amazing, they also tend to be busy. Because of that, I recommend arriving 10-15 minutes ahead of time.

This will leave plenty of time for parking and maybe a quick snack before heading over to the meeting spot. It can also allow nerves to calm a bit before your session begins.

No need to head to the meeting spot until it’s time for your session! I'll most likely be bopping around looking for some great spots to shoot in the park.

6. Relax and Enjoy Yourself

Try to Avoid Stress

Guess what? If you only remember one thing from this list, it should be this—relax and enjoy your session! As I mentioned before, stress can be easily transferred to children making it incredibly tough to capture happy moments.

Do yourself and your family a favor and try to really enjoy this time with your favorite people! 

Create Natural Moments of Connection

I assume a big reason you booked me is because our styles align! That means you’re interested in having photos of the genuine, heartfelt moments you’ve seen from my portfolio. Though I always guide clients throughout a session, there are a few things you can do to help achieve this kind of photo!

Don’t be afraid to create connection during your session. You can do this by being spontaneous! That’s where the good stuff happens (and I’ll never be like, “Hey stop! I didn’t tell you to do that!”).

These sessions should be fluid. Do the little things you know will make your child laugh. Lift them in the air, tickle them, and squeeze them tight.

Also, don’t be afraid to be affectionate with your partner—hold their hand, kiss them on the cheek, snuggle up close to them. The more you candidly and naturally create moments like that, the more genuine they will photograph.

On top of that, the more relaxed you feel, the more these moments of connection will come naturally. You’ll be amazed at how that genuineness comes across in your photos! I promise we’ll get a few great photos where everyone is looking at the camera, but my main goal is to try to capture those little heartfelt, joyful details that you never want to forget. 

7. Don’t Force Smiles

I know it can be so easy to pull out the, “Cheese!” behind my camera. It’s what we were taught to say our whole lives! I implore you to try to resist this—begging for smiles tends to cause stress in children and typically only causes strained smiles. That’s not what we’re going for here! 

Feel free to be goofy behind the camera and do things you know will cause genuine giggles for your kiddos. But I also recommend stepping back for a few and letting me naturally interact with your child. This often brings out their little personalities in a beautiful way.

8. Remember That Kids
WILL Be Kids

As much as we might want children to snuggle you and bust out their biggest smiles during your session, it’s important to remember that kids will be kids. They will run away and do that little back arch toddler wriggle right out of your arms. They might even cry. And guess what? That’s okay! 

Running photos are beautiful and snuggling photos if they’re upset are also beautiful. We will pivot and we WILL get some great photos no matter what.

Remember, I’ve been doing this for 10+ years—I’ve seen it all. Your child will not be the first one to run away while trying to take a group shot. Wrangling and joyfully picking them up or tickling them can make for such fun photos! If they want to move, we’ll try to do more active photos. 

As you’ll see from above, the main takeaway from this list is that it’s important to relax no matter what kind of mood your child is in. Stress will only enhance an already bad mood, so try to go with the flow as much as possible! 

With these tips in tow, you should be fully equipped to have a great Family Session! Don’t hesitate to reach out with questions and don’t forget to enjoy this :)