Family photography is about as intimate of a form of photography as you can get. It has been estimated that 85% of people who take photographs are doing so for the first time and the majority of those taking the photos are single or married. No one wants to feel self-conscious, especially when you and your loved ones are in the picture, but having a family portrait taken can give you an insight into how you might look like in ten or twenty years time.
In today’s world, privacy is becoming increasingly important. It used to be that family photos would only need to be taken at a restaurant or pool party but now the option to personalize your photos by inserting family or friends into them has become more commonplace. It’s not always easy to fit in all the details of your family, especially when you’ve got two young children. So if you are considering taking photographs of your family in the future, then it’s worth asking yourself the following questions:
How many members of your family do you want to include in the photograph? If you only have one member in mind, you should probably only consider using a personalized photo printing service to take the photograph. If you don’t want to limit your search to just one person, you could also use several portraits taken of different members of your family.
Taking a family portrait can be quite a task. If you think that the images you’ve created could be of great use to a younger sibling, you could organize a group photograph or perhaps ask a friend to take a group portrait for you.
You could try making a series of portraits out of the images that you’ve taken, but unless you have some equipment available to photograph each member of the family, this will be quite a feat. You could also take a group photograph of the entire family. However, if you want a more traditional look for your photographs, you could take each photograph individually.
You should know that photographing a group of family is no different to taking a photograph of yourself, your partner or your spouse. Everyone will be nervous about their personal images being captured by anyone other than their photographer. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t request the services of a professional family photographer however. As a rule, a professional will offer you more variety in the images that they can create, as well as offering you their expertise in taking photographs.
Professional family photography is generally more expensive than personal photography, but they make up for the extra expense with the quality of their pictures. A good professional photographer will have experience taking photographs of many different types of people. The range of backgrounds that they can use to take their images as well as how they can integrate them will vary from one professional photographer to another. A good photographer will therefore have a much wider range of options for taking photographs than a beginner.
Perhaps the most important part of family photography is being comfortable. Your family will probably have a distinct personality; something that will be apparent in each photograph that you take. It’s best to set out the look and feel of your photographs so that everyone will have a different feeling about them.
One of the best ways to look at the photographs that you’ve taken, is to look at them in your living room. If you don’t already have an idea of what the photo’s look like, then you could use an electronic camera to take the photographs and then keep the images in a digital folder or on your computer. It’s also possible to use a professional to take the photographs, which could help you achieve a consistent look throughout the photographs.
If you’ve got a definite idea of what you want the photographs to look like, you might find it a good idea to bring in a professional. Remember, the more experienced the photographer, the more they can customize the images that you create.
You might be thinking about using a professional to have a personal touch added to the photographs that you create. This could be done by adding a framed title to the images as well as a background image of a favorite scene from each family member’s life. If you’d like a photograph to be shown on a wall behind your family portrait, then you should get a high quality picture frame or print.
You should also avoid using the same photo for each photograph. Consider using each person’s photograph for one purpose and then use the image for another occasion. This will give you an opportunity to share each person’s individual and family style with the photographs that you create.
