Christmas Family Portraits at City Park

I always feel so privileged when families ask me to photograph them over and over again, and Kate and Shane are no exception!

Kate wanted to organise an extended family session with her parents and her sister, Sarah and her family for Christmas at The City Park!

Working with 2 kids under 2 I knew I had to work quickly, as the window of opportunity is always a bit smaller with toddlers. Normally when shooting at the City Park I like to use the train as a bit of a distraction or bribe, kids love to watch the train, but for James, it was the lawn mower doing maintence in the park! We even angled the portraits so that he could see the gardener mowing the lawns behind me which gave him a bit of pep!

I really love photographing at the rotunda in the City Park, it’s always shaded and has great levels with the steps and also makes a great background when moving to one of the trees close by!

Photographing extended families is always a fun time, and since COVID I’ve been doing more and more of them as I think people are starting to see how important it is to capture your family together whenever you have the opportunity. What I normally do is photograph the children individually first and then build groupings. So photographing any siblings, and smaller family groupings before photographing the whole extended family as a group! In terms of extended families these guys were quite a small group, so it was easy to keep track, but when I have larger family groupings I like to get one of the kids to help me! They can tell me who everyone is and who belongs to which family and they can help me keep track of whether we’ve done all the possible combinations!