My recent session inquiry started something like this: We would like to book for a family lifestyle session but we want to come to your home based studio as we are in a process of moving and our style is quite minimalistic and would like more clean background pictures (in nutshell anyway).

At first, I was worried I can’t capture lifestyle photos in my bare looking studio room! Secondly the family session was exactly that -photos of a family, which I can honestly say I don’t remember if that ever happened to me! Normally, I am asked to focus mainly on child/children as most of the time parents shy away from the camera and it is normally me encouraging them to participate bit more. We take hundreds of photos of our children and have hardly ever any of us all-together proudly displayed in our homes.

And no, even the ever popular selfies can’t capture the emotions and connection between you all that you want to have captured as we get so preoccupied with how to reach the shutter button, where on the phone we should be looking, who is actually looking, who is half cropped and the list goes on.

I am not saying let’s not do individual photos of children! I make sure (twice a year) I have lovely portraits of my children to change over in the frames or give to family members but I also have yearly family photoshoot that I am included in as well. It’s not only important for us to document our family unit but also for our children and future generations…

Anyway, this session scared me a little as I wasn’t sure how I can support them looking as naturally as possible and capturing the essence of their family without telling them where to position etc as my home studio is a room in my house and it has things like a fireplace and my office corner…

I must say they were absolutely amazing, totally embraced how the session naturally unfolded, concentrating on what was so important for them to document, interaction with their lovely baby, the joy, the love they showed. It absolutely delighted me how much I enjoyed the session (I really wasn’t sure at the beginning), I included parents in every image taken individually or together and I was so pleased with the flow of the session. I got a lovely message afterwards how much they enjoyed the shoot and they love their photos. I am sharing it because I wanted to show that it is possible without being too staged and that actually it could have been done in their house if you didn’t know otherwise. 

#photographybypetra #lifestylephotography #familyphotoshoot #familylife