Extended Family Photography Sessions

Extended family sessions are an amazing thing to photograph and a wonderful way to record all the different relationships within your family. I’m often asked to visit families to take some pictures to record a milestone event like a 60^th birthday or a ruby wedding, or just to hang out for a day and take pictures of grandparents with their grandchildren, parents with their siblings, and kids with their cousins.  These pictures are guaranteed to be treasured by everyone involved.

I spend the morning with you on your photo shoot, arriving nice and early for the best light and to get younger children when they are full of energy. If we head out to the park this also means that we are able to beat the crowds and have places to ourselves.

We usually start with a family walk – finding some beautiful backdrops for your portraits.  It’s lovely to photograph people chatting and interacting as we go from place to place and the children always find things to do, trees to climb, and games to play.  I love to get lots of energy in my pictures and finding zip wires and dens or playing a game of ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’ ensures everyone has a brilliant time and adds a wonderful dimension to your pictures.

When a big family gets together it’s brilliant to take some pictures with everyone in but it’s also a great opportunity to take photographs of each family unit individually. I make sure to take pictures that show everyone at their best and I’m happy to do all the combinations you have in mind, it’s a great opportunity for example to have a shot of older siblings together for example, I know I always treasure pictures of me and my three brothers.

As well as the more formal group shots I spend the majority of the morning photographing in a more documentary fashion, taking pictures as you all enjoy yourselves together.

I do find that bringing games and activities into things really helps to create an energetic and fun filled set of images so think about things that you love to do together and let’s add that into our photo shoot. Games with a competitive element work particularly well with older children and lead to so much laughter and fun.

Activities that bring different generations together also ensure wonderful images, whether that’s grandparents cooking with grandchildren or a competitive game of cards or Jenga if we’re taking pictures indoors. Equally football, cricket, table tennis, water games, giant bubbles – outside there are so many opportunities.

On any family photo shoot then individual portraits are an important element and I ensure to take beautiful images of all your children and grandchildren as they play and enjoy the day during our extended family photography session. These images will be full of laughter and fun and that will capture their personalities brilliantly.

After the session I bring things together into a beautiful selection of images for you to choose from all in timeless black and white.  Albums are popular from family events as they really tell the story of the day and we can do multiple copies of the same album for each individual family or, we can create individual albums which really highlight different children.  Frames are all handmade and can be created to different designs, either a traditional single image or, often popular with grandparents, a large image in the centre and then individual shots of grandchildren at the edges. We work together to ensure that we have the perfect designs for you to enjoy.  Digital files are also available if you want to make any additional prints yourselves or share your images on social media.

It’s the perfect way to celebrate your family. I hope you like what you have seen and read here today, if you would like to arrange a photo shoot with your own family then do get in touch, I’d love to hear from you.