What I Learned Photographing 100 Families

I just finished my hundredth family session. The best photos were never the posed ones. I went back through all of those galleries last month, every single one, from the very first nervous session in a borrowed backyard to the one last Sunday with three kids, two grandparents and a golden retriever who refused to sit still. When I picked my favorite frame from each family, almost none of them were the shots where everyone was lined up and looking at the camera.

They were the in-between moments. A dad mid-laugh. A toddler grabbing her brother’s nose. A grandmother looking at her grandson instead of at me. Here is what a hundred living rooms taught me, and what I wish every family knew before their session.

Let kids lead

The moment a five-year-old shows me their favorite toy, the session starts. It took me about twenty families to figure that out. Early on I came in with a plan: a list of poses, a set of groupings, a tidy order of shots. Kids smelled the plan from across the room and resisted it with everything they had.

Now I walk in with almost no plan for the children. I sit on the floor. I ask who wants to show me their room. I let them hand me a stuffed rabbit, a rock collection or a drawing of a shark, and I take it seriously. Within ten minutes they are dragging me around the house, and their parents are following, laughing, and the photos start happening on their own.

A few things kids love

• Being asked to “help” by holding a reflector or calling out “cheese” for the grown-ups.
• Silly challenges, like “don’t you dare laugh,” which never works.
• Whispering a secret into a parent’s ear, which always produces a real reaction.
• Showing off something they are proud of, such as a cartwheel, a tooth gap or a bike.

Messy is better

Parents worry about the house. They apologize for the laundry on the couch, the cereal on the floor and the crayon on the wall. I understand. But after a hundred sessions I can tell you honestly that clients never look at their gallery and wish the kitchen had been cleaner. They look at it and cry because their son’s hair still had that little curl, or because it was the last session before Grandpa moved to Arizona.

I will move a pile of mail out of the frame, sure. I will ask you to open the curtains. But I will not ask you to turn your home into a catalog. The things that feel messy to you right now are the things you will miss when the kids are grown: tiny shoes by the door, the fridge covered in drawings, the dog bed nobody ever puts away.

Perfect families don’t exist. Real ones are better in photos anyway.

Ivy

Shoot at home

Homes hold the real story: the couch, the dog, the kitchen counter. I still do plenty of park and beach sessions, and they are beautiful, but if a family asks which one I recommend, I almost always say home. Here is why.

1. Kids are comfortable. Their toys are there, their snacks are there and nobody is cold, sunburned or bored.
2. You capture this exact chapter. The house you live in now will not look the same in five years. Neither will the kids.
3. Light is often gorgeous. Big windows, a sunny kitchen or a bedroom with sheer curtains can rival any studio.
4. Real activities happen. Pancakes, bath time, building a blanket fort, reading before bed. These are the moments you will want to remember.
5. No travel stress. No loading the car, no parking, no meltdowns in the back seat on the way there.

Some of my favorite sessions were built entirely around one ordinary activity. A family in Boise made cookies with me for ninety minutes. A family in Charleston gave their twins a bath. Those galleries feel like memories, not photo shoots.

What parents taught me

Kids get most of the attention in family photos, but parents taught me just as much. The biggest lesson: most moms and dads are so busy managing everyone else that they forget they are in the picture too. Many parents, especially whoever takes most of the family’s phone photos, tell me they barely appear in their own family’s albums.

So I make a point of photographing each parent with each child, and the couple on their own, even for just a few frames. Every time, someone thanks me later. One mom told me the only recent photo she had with her teenage son was the one from our session. That stays with me.

I also learned that the quiet parent is often the most photogenic. The dad who says “I’m terrible in pictures” usually has a wonderful, unguarded way of looking at his kids. My job is to make sure he is in the frame when that happens.

Key takeaway: let go of the perfect shot. Real moments, real homes and real messes make photos you will treasure.

How I run a session now

After a hundred families, my sessions look very different from where I started. I spend the first fifteen minutes playing, not shooting. I ask parents to forget about getting everyone to look at the camera. I suggest one simple activity, like reading a book, dancing in the kitchen or a walk around the block, and I follow wherever it goes.

I still take one classic group photo with everyone looking at the lens, because grandparents deserve it. But it is usually one or two frames out of several hundred, and it is rarely the one that ends up on the wall.

Pets are part of the plan now, too. Early on I treated the family dog as a complication, something to be shut in the bedroom so the humans could pose. That was a mistake. Some of my most-loved frames feature a beagle stealing a sandwich or a cat sitting stubbornly in the middle of a group hug. If an animal is part of your everyday life, it belongs in your photos. I just ask families to have a leash and a few treats nearby.

And teenagers, who are famously unwilling participants, have taught me to stop forcing smiles. I give them a job, like choosing the music or helping with a younger sibling, and I take their portraits when they are not expecting it. Most of them come around by the end. A few even ask to see the back of the camera, which, from a fifteen-year-old, is the highest possible compliment.

Here’s to the next hundred

I started photographing families because I thought I was good at making people look nice. I keep doing it because I have learned that families do not need to look nice. They need to look like themselves. The sticky hands, the crooked collars and the dog who photobombs every frame are not problems to fix. They are the whole point.

Thank you to every family who let me into their home over these hundred sessions. You taught me more than any workshop ever could. I cannot wait to see what the next hundred teach me.