Asheville Photographer shares top secrets for success when planning Extended Family Portraits during your Family Vacation in Asheville, NC
We’ve been in the business of capturing memories for families vacationing in Asheville for the last twelve years & during that time, we’ve photographed hundreds of large groups & extended families! We’ve learned a few things along the way that we’d like to share to ensure successful outcomes for your extended family portrait session!
1. Wardrobe:
Choosing great wardrobe is arguably one of the most important pieces to consider when planning your Extended Family Portrait Session. Typically, during our pre-session phone consultation, I advise my clients to choose a theme color or color pallet and instruct everyone to find a subtle way to weave that color or those colors into their outfit selections. This will subtly tie everyone together for those large group photos without making you look too “matchy-matchy” (which is dated and not all that cute!) When you tell every to “wear a blue shirt” — inevitably there are going to be varying shades of blue and that doesn’t quite land the way it does when families choose a theme color or color pallet and subtly weave that through all of their outfits! This family chose fall jewel tones and as you can see they used green, blue, wine and cream tones throughout all of their outfits and I think they look amazing together!
2. Location & Props:
Be sure to let your photographer know about any mobility issues during your pre-session phone consultation so that we can choose locations that are easily accessible and props that support our subjects’ needs! For this session, we chose a beautiful field with mountain views, just outside of Asheville. This field was ideal for grandparents because we were able to drive right up to it with no major hurdles! This family also opted to use one of our Antique Sofas as a prop for Grandparents to take a load of & snuggle in with their grandchildren! We’ve amassed a pretty impressive collection of beautiful, antique props over the years and typically will discuss using any of those during your pre-session phone consultation ahead of your portrait session!
3. Timing:
Time of day matters for sooooo many reasons but the primary one being that the softest, most flattering light of the day happens 90 minutes after sunrise or 90minutes before sunset. As you can see, on this day, we got lucky and had quite a lot of clouds in the sky which lended itself to nice, even light for the most part but we also had some warm, late afternoon sunset light peeking through the trees as well which gave these images that magical little glow we all love so much! Another thing to consider when choosing a shoot time — children. Particularly their sleep / nap schedules, their moods throughout the day / after traveling / time changes, etc. Especially when we’re working with smaller children, we want to choose shoot times that don’t disrupt sleep schedules and promote catching those little people when their moods are going to be the happiest during the day!
4. Don’t take yourselves too seriously.
I cannot stress this enough: If you want ‘real’, ‘lifestyle’ or ‘photojournalistic’ style portraits, the very best thing you can do to get that is to encourage everyone involved to try to relax and get out of their own heads… be themselves! We always try to infuse our sessions with a sense of ease and comfortability when we can, we chat with our clients to try to connect and relate with them, we give funny prompts, we make dumb jokes or sing silly songs to get them to laugh but what we love most is when you interact with each other as you naturally would!
Be funny, Be loving, Be playful.
We’re here for it!
