Are you planning to start family photography and running out of ideas or want to make portraits look natural but don’t know how to do that? Here are 5 easy tips that you can follow to make an awesome start of your family photography.
1. Make Every Possible Combination
Professional photographer at Radhika Rao Photography suggests that to start with, you better do the biggest grouping. So, you can ask the whole family to sit (or stand) together for the initial few shots. This is a fantastic way to break the ice and get everyone prepared to being prompted for the shoot. Once you start from here, you can easily go on adding and removing family members from your frame, making a range of different combinations. Some best possible combinations are:
- Everyone in
- Mom and kids
- Dad and kids
- Mom and son
- Dad and daughter
- Kids only
- Kids and pets
- All boys
- All girls
- Mom and dad (if the kids are old enough to sit alone)
Take an Image for Facebook
Keep in mind to take an image that you can use as a Facebook banner. This means that it should either be right justified or should be a good, evenly spread composition that you can crop to fit the banner space. You can also capture a photo that you can use as a profile image.
Extended Family
If the family you will be doing your photo shoot with brings a lot of extended family members such as grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, then you can get even more number of combinations, like all girls and all boys in the family, grandparents only, cousins only and so on.
After you capture all possible combinations, if time permits, try to capture a couple of more full family shots. The initial shots during the day were typically for warm up, while these last ones will give you a more relaxed and natural images.
2. Make Everyone Get Involved
Getting the help of every family member during the shoot will keep everyone engaged and involved in the process. Often, while capturing images of kids, parents stand on the side to get their attention for the shot. To get children to look into the camera, suggest parents to stand near you and in line with your camera.
To prevent boredom for children, you can take their help when you capture photos of their parents. Asking them to act as a cheering squad or to make funny faces at their parents often brings some absolutely wonderful results.
It’s also important to give kids a break. The best way is to direct them into a space where you may be able to sneak them into the frame while shooting their parents.
3. Fun Activities to Try
It’s a great idea to make the family play games and conduct other fun activities in order to get dynamic and natural portraits. This also prevents dullness and the excitement continues throughout the shoot. Some fun ideas for such activities are:
- A jump shot is an all-time favorite. Everyone can get into it irrespective of age or gender.
- Let parents stand in the middle and children run around them in circles.
- Give children and even adults various games to play. Bring the child in you out and you can get some truly candid images when everyone takes part.
Visit Radhika Rao Photography to get various amazing ideas.
4. Record of Growth
It’s fun to show the growth of kids, particularly to those clients who approach you every year for family portraits. To achieve this, just make everyone stand in a line next to each other. Parents will serve as a point of comparison.
5. Become Unobtrusive
This may be a little difficult but if you achieve it, you can get really awesome and natural photos. Tell them to try to focus on each other forgetting about your presence and capture their reactions. A great idea is to give them a break and capture their shots without their knowledge.
Follow these tips and you can successfully start your family photography and will be excited to do it every time thereafter.