Family Portrait Session at the Beach

Every year for the past 5 years I have photographed Emma, Levi and Eli.

When they moved into their forever home this year, Emma was so excited to have this amazing wall perfect for this giant family portrait.

We ventured out to Bridport and photographed the three of them together! Emma was worried about Eli, as sunset was well past his bedtime, but the little man was such a trooper! He even helped me photograph his parents.

A few days after their shoot, Emma had said to me that they had become unsure about having a big portrait on the particular wall that we had discussed, they weren’t sure they wanted to look at themselves THAT big on their dining room wall every day and had asked for me to find some artprints to fill the space as a separate thing to their family portraits.

I’m a really big advocate of making sure whatever prints you end up with look good in the spot you’re planning to put it. Because we had already discussed the spot I knew that it would need something reasonable large to fill the wall space and not look small and silly, BUT it was overlooking their dining room table, so having their faces filling the frame wasn’t a great option (no one wants to feel like they’re being watched while they’re eating!) So I knew that I needed to photograph something that would end up being more of a landscape, just with the three of them in the frame and I photographed their session with that in mind.

When it came to their viewing session, I explained that I knew they had moved away from the idea of their family portraits on the wall, but this was the vision that I had while I was photographing their family.

They fell in love with it

It turned out to be everything they didn’t even realise they wanted for that space. I took into account the fact that they were planning on putting a bookshelf to the left side of the wall, and that they didn’t want to be watched while they were eating their breakfast!

You don’t have to have an exact vision in your head of what you want to achieve from your photography session. but if you have SOME idea it helps both myself during our photography session, but also you when it comes to your viewing appointment. I will photograph a session very differently if you want a large image overlooking your dining room table to if you want to create an album, and while I photograph in a way that will allow me to create an album if you change your mind away from the large image, it definitely make the process much easier for everyone if you know WHY you’re having your family photographed.