Family Photography…not as easy as it looks

I love to look at family photography…especially with little kids. After doing several shoots with little kids I can see that you have to be quick, entertaining and patient. I’ve also discovered that I can take 400-600 photos in 1 hour of a family and end of throwing most of the photos away. If I can get 50 good photos from a family shoot, or roughly 10%, I feel like I’m doing pretty good. I think I’m going to get a jester hat with bells on it to wear during a family photo shoot. It might keep their attention for a minute or so.

Then what? Now I know why the old time photographers used to have a little toy squeekie birdie and they would say, “Watch the birdie”.

At any rate, here’s some of my favorites from the workshop I attended in Redding. Keep in mind that there were approximately 10 photographers pointing their cameras at this family so it was just pure luck that I got almost all of them looking at me…I think I might have said something like “Watch the funny lady” and then jingled my jester hat…just kiddin’

This one turned out much better than expected. Several of us wanted to get all the boys/men to sit on the table so we could take a picture of their matching shoes. All the photographers were giving instructions about crossing their legs and sitting the same way. As most of the other photographers finished up with their shots, I kept shooting and got this one. This little guy had an uncanny awareness of where the cameras were pointing and was not in the least bit camera shy. I didn’t even have to crop this one except a little on the sides. (He was a lot of fun.)

All in all, this was a fun and darling family who really helped us out with improving our skills as family portrait photographers.