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(Simple tips for taking a great family portrait)

Kate’s Escapades – Picture Perfect
(Simple tips for taking a great family portrait)

December 2nd, 2010 | Add a Comment

It’s that time again. The annual event that often strikes fear and doubt into even the most confident and pulled-together of parents. Of course, I’m talking about family holiday portrait time. Luckily for you, through many years of trial and error with my own family, I’ve come up with some easy tips for surviving family portrait day. And as a bonus, you may even get a photo that you’ll be happy to send out to your friends and family. If you’re super duper lucky, you’ll like the results so much that you’ll even be brave enough to display your new portrait on your own fireplace mantel.

Here are my tried and true tips for taking a great family portrait:

1. Select your clothing

It IS important to coordinate the clothing. Having a color scheme gives the portrait a pulled together, cohesive feel. It’s what makes the photograph look like a family portrait, instead of a quick snapshot taken at Aunt Susan’s summer barbecue. But please…no identical match-y, match-y outfits, unless you want to look like THAT family, you know the group you see at Disneyland, complete with identical shirts, hats, pants, sunglasses, hair ribbons…you get the drift. Don’t do that. Let each person show their individual clothing style, while fitting within the chosen color palate. Don’t put your 16 year old daughter in a mom turtleneck just because it’s the right color. She won’t be comfortable, and that will show in the picture. Let her find something in her closet that she feels good in, AND that fits within the chosen color scheme. Trust me, you don’t want want to start out the photo-shoot with grumpy children.

Now for choosing your colors, work with one or two neutrals as your main colors (think navy, gray, black, khaki, denim) and add a pop of an accent color (anything bright, like red, teal, yellow, burgundy, orange, whatever suits your fancy). This year I chose navy blue, gray and a splash of mustard yellow, with jeans on the bottom.

2. Pick your location

Choose a location for your portrait that is comfortable, fun and familiar. I always prefer to shoot our portraits outdoors, usually at a local park, because there are nine of us to fit into the picture and shooting indoors feels cramped. Plus, if you shoot at a park or somewhere else your family finds fun, you can bribe them with the promise of some playtime when the shoot is finished. I am not above using bribery as motivation. Portrait day is not the day to take the high road. Shooting outside also offers the added benefit of not trying to have your family clean and dressed AND a room picture perfect all at the same time, a nearly impossible feat for my family on most days.

Scout out your location ahead of time. I guarantee your kids will not be pleased if you spend the first half hour of shooting time wandering around trying to find a place to take a picture. You may even want to take a shot of the locale choices beforehand so you can see how the background will look. That way you can check for distracting things like buildings, cars, or signs which may be in the background and might go unnoticed during the actual shoot.

3. Position your subjects naturally

You want to capture your family’s personality in the portrait. Try to avoid a police line-up look, you know, with everyone lined up side by side in a straight line. Trust me, that is not a warm and cozy look for your family portrait. Instead, try to position people in a natural formation. Try arranging people at different height levels, some sitting, some standing, some leaning.

A sneaky trick I’ve learned along the way is to send your family to the spot you want to have as the background and let them have a minute to mill around while you set up the tripod or pretend to “fiddle” with the camera settings. Often, with only a little tweaking on your part, they will arrange themselves into a natural grouping all on their own as they wait for you to be ready to shoot. My son automatically climbed into that wheelbarrow, so I kept him there for the portrait. My daughter with the hat on also naturally plopped herself up on a hay bale. All I had to do was fill in everyone else and viola, a natural portrait grouping for my family.

Also, pick several backgrounds for your photo shoot, so you’ll have a selection to choose from. Sometimes things don’t quite jell and look as good as you’d hoped for so it’s good to have a few different settings to choose from.

4. Taking the pictures

There are two ways to take your own family portraits. One is to bring along a patient and kind friend who owes you a big favor. If you choose this method, make sure you set up the photo yourself, placing everyone where you want them, making sure to leave yourself a spot in the arangement. Get your camera all set to shoot and then have your assistant click away. It’s an even better bet to set your camera up on a tripod so all your friend has to do is press the button.

The way I prefer to shoot my family portraits is to put my camera on a tripod and use a self timer. Make sure you figure out how to use this feature on your camera BEFORE you go out to shoot. I used a new camera this year, and forgot to figure this out ahead of time. Not good. You’d be surprised what chaos can ensue in the time it takes to pull out the old camera manual and look it up. It’s also very important to leave yourself a space that is easy to get into once you click the button and start the self timer. An added bonus to this method is the hilarious show you’re putting on for your kids as you dash to your spot. Nothing puts the kids in a better mood than watching how funny mom looks with an urgent look of panic on her face as she runs to get into the shot. Hey, whatever works, right?

5. The more the merrier

Take a LOT of shots. Most cameras are digital so you have nothing to loose by taking lots of frames. If you take enough shots you’re bound to come up with a great family portrait.

And lastly…