3 Ways Your Family Photo Session Can Help Your Family Connect
How to Make the Most of Your Family Photography Session
In this blog, you’ll find practical tips and creative ways to maximize your family time together during your family photography or newborn photography session.
Meet the Neumann Family! It’s my pleasure to introduce you to this sweet bunch. They welcomed a new bright light into their lives during the pandemic, so we were able to meet up in December for a fun family photo session to document their growing family of five. Their session was full of beautiful, natural moments together and it is such an honour to share their collection with you.
Improve Your Relationship to Family-Time
(With Timeless Family Photos)
Do you ever feel like you’re stressing about the stress of letting this precious family stage pass you by? People are always telling you:
“Don’t miss a moment of this stage.”
“It goes by so quickly.”
“You’ll miss these days one day.”
All these words of advice can begin to feel like a lot of pressure. It’s easy to start seeing your family time together through a mindset of scarcity rather than presence, or gratitude. I am so passionate about helping moms discover the abundance of memories that come along with every single moment, and helping you set aside intentional times to:
Soak in special moments
Create memories
Relive memories
Open them up, hold them, and enjoy them together for years to come
Life is so busy. And of course, we can’t stop time. But with a family photo session at Reflections of Life Photography, you can definitely start changing your relationship to time. I want to help you create family moments you can enjoy, not stress about – because you know you’ll get to relive them as often as you’d like.
Not only will you get breathtaking portraits of this season in your life, but you also get fantastic opportunities to spend intentional time together before, during and after your family or newborn photoshoot.
The Family Photoshoot Experience Begins When We First Meet:
Taking the perfect newborn and family photos starts before your session. You deserve to walk into the studio feeling comfortable, confident and most importantly, in your happy place!
First, let’s get you comfortable during our preparation meeting.
Since I’ll be taking care of all the photoshoot details, I recommend creating a few minutes of family time either the day before or the morning of your photoshoot. Whether it’s just the two of you before your first baby arrives, or you’re able to sneak in a conversation with the kids before bedtime, let’s stir up some of those happy emotions leading up to the big day.
Here are a few ways to get yourselves glowing with happy family feelings:
Watch old family videos or flip through old family photos.
Look through your wedding album.
Talk about your favourite family memory to relive the moment. Maybe even recreate it!
Just before you go to bed, pull out your absolute favourite photo of your family. One that really makes you smile. Set your alarm for 3 minutes, and just meditate with it. Close your eyes, remember what the air smelled like. Remember what the weather felt like. What the scene sounded like. What happened before and after the photo. Let that fill you with warm, happy feelings so you can bring those feelings into your photoshoot.
You don’t need to worry about making these conversations or settings perfect. You can have these conversations while you’re all brushing your teeth, or eating breakfast. You don’t have to be perfectly gathered around the dinner table, having a serious discussion. These memories can become a part of your life again as easily as they came into it. No one has to have their hair done yet, and you don’t need to worry about the house being clean. It’s the intention of the conversation that will put that extra love in all your eyes for photo day.
The Family Experience Continues During Your Portrait Session:
I love turning your newborn or family photo shoots into a collection of beautiful moments we can capture into photos.
Michelle Obama once described marriage as:
“Not the big, splashy stuff. It’s just the little day-to-day sharing and routines and rituals that we still have.”
I think this is true for all of family life.
What are your little things?
Is it kissing your baby’s feet?
Or smelling their hair while you snuggle?
Or watching your husband play with your kids?
Or the pride you feel when you see your kids playing together?
Write these perfect little things down. We’ll capture them in photos and keep that list for happy memories to include in your albums to remember years from now. And don’t worry, whatever you don’t have time to write down and document – eyes will tell the rest of the story.
Eyes Tell the Story So Well
First looks. A slight glance. An accidental look shared. A lingering gaze.
Your eyes in all these moments are so powerful.
When was the last time you looked your spouse in the eyes? For more than two seconds? (And not while waiting for an answer to the question, “What should we have for dinner tonight?”)
A lot of research has been done around the power of eye contact, or the mutual gaze. Looking into each other’s eyes helps each of you feel seen. And that moment of recognition, of pausing and really seeing each other amid a busy season of life – well, it results in some of the most beautiful photos.
I create moments that turn glances into mutual, lingering gazes.
And not just between couples. Between their whole families.
Even research on eye contact with newborns shows that infants as young as a couple of days old prefer to look at someone gazing back at them. Your baby knows your gaze – isn’t that incredible? And they will grow up seeing the way you look at them with delight.
During our photo session, I’ll create the moments for your kids, so you can also sit back quietly and watch them have fun. Take it all in. Marvel at your creations. As a mother, you’re so often the creator of moments. The one making the birthday parties happen. The one reading bedtime stories. The one pulling out the craft supplies. … and the one taking the photos. I’ve been there, so I know how much you deserve the space to just be present and enjoy the moment.
When you join me in my studio for your family or newborn photo session, rest assured, you will be taken care of.
How To Keep The Family Time Going Long After Your Photo Session
With one photo session, you have at least three built-in ways to increase your family time: before, during and after.
After your session, take advantage of being together (and your beautiful hair and makeup!) by getting a warm drink from Station 1 Coffeehouse, or gelato at Monk’s Chocolate just around the corner from my studio before you rush off to the rest of your day.
Let these good feelings carry over into your day and your week. Before you know it, I’ll be getting in touch with you to share your new photo gallery in an image reveal session!
As you take home your new albums, prints and portraits to display and cherish, you’ll have another opportunity to spend family time together.
We all love seeing ourselves in photos, looking and feeling our best (kids and adults alike!) Don’t let your albums go right on the shelf. Before they go on display, gather everyone together with a pizza or movie-night snacks and start it off by looking through your photos as a family. Ask which photos are their favourite, see which ones make them giggle, and enjoy the beautiful sight of their adoring faces soaking up their gorgeous new photos.
It’s truly magical.
And the best part? Everyone is going to want to see photos, not just the people who were in them! Parents, grandparents, friends and siblings will want to see glimpses of your family in photos as you travel through this season together. This provides great new opportunities to connect with everyone (Now more than ever as we are physically separated by the pandemic).
And here’s a tip!
I love leaving little notes in our family albums. Nothing elaborate, just point form thoughts are fine, like:
Big events that happened that year
Quotes that sum up our experience together during that season
Funny things you want to remember
Slip these thoughts into an album so you can remember them alongside your photos years from now. (And your children too! So many things that might have otherwise slipped from their young memories can stay part of their happy childhood story). When they’re grown up and have families of their own, it might even help them remember the things they loved about childhood and want to repeat with their kids.
Conclusion:
One of the very best things about growing up and having your own family is that you can create your own rituals and traditions. Annual family photos can become a ritual where you intentionally connect before, during and after the photoshoot. I promise that your kids will never forget the feeling of fun and “togetherness” you share as you stop for a special treat on the way home from your afternoon together.
Author, therapist and speaker Esther Perel says, “When you pick a partner, you pick a story. So what kind of story are you going to write?” This is a question that we can easily lose track of in the busyness of the day-to-day. There are meals to make, kids to taxi around and meetings to attend. Remembering that every day that goes by adds a page to our family story helps me to be more intentional about how I show up for them.
When you invest your time and resources into spending a few hours together at a family photoshoot, you are writing your family’s story. And what a beautiful story it is!
If you’re ready to write your family’s next chapter, let’s talk.
