Family portraits with kids, made painless

Every parent booking a family session has the same quiet worry: what if the kids won't cooperate? The honest answer is that they won't, at least not in the way a stiff group photo needs them to. The good news is that the stiff group photo is not the goal. A family session here is built around how children actually behave, and the best frames usually come from the moments between the "official" ones.

Pick the time of day, not the date

The single biggest factor in a family session with small children is timing. A two-year-old at 9 in the morning after breakfast is a different person from the same child at 4 in the afternoon with no nap. Tell Stef the window in which your children are usually at their best, and the session is booked into it. For outdoor work around Centurion and Pretoria the soft light of the last hour before sunset is ideal, but a happy child in harsher light beats a miserable child in perfect light every time. Mornings work beautifully for under-fives.

Dress for a palette, not a match

Matching outfits date quickly and rarely flatter everyone. Instead choose a palette of two or three colours that sit well together, such as cream, denim and rust, or sage, white and tan, and let each person wear something within it that they feel good in. Lay everything on a bed the night before and look at it as a group. Avoid large logos, neon and very fine stripes, which shimmer on camera. The portrait wardrobe guide goes deeper on fabrics and colours.

Bring the things that make your family yours

A favourite blanket, the dog, a football, the book you read every night. Props that belong to your life give children something to do with their hands and give the photographs a story. Anything the children can hold, throw, hug or climb on is worth bringing. Anything that needs to stay clean is worth leaving at home.

Snacks, water and a change of clothes

Pack snacks that do not stain: crackers, apple slices, dry cereal. A small bottle of water each. A spare top for anyone under six, because someone will find mud, water or a chocolate. Sessions include time to change, so a quick swap does not cost you a frame.

Do not tell them to smile

This is the part parents find hardest. Children who are told to smile produce the tight, closed-mouth grimace every family album has at least one of. Instead, Stef will give them something to do. Race to the tree. Whisper a secret to Mom. Tickle Dad. Jump on three. The laughter that follows is real, and that is what gets photographed. Your job on the day is simply to be with your children, not to manage them.

What a session actually looks like

The first ten minutes are for the children to get used to a stranger with a camera. Stef talks, they show off a toy, nobody points a lens at anyone. Then a loose plan: a few frames of everyone together while energy is high, individual portraits of each child while the others play, then parents together once the kids are occupied. Family sessions run for around ninety minutes and include up to six people as standard, with more welcome as an add-on. Larger groups, grandparents included, are planned the same way with a little more time.

Studio or location?

For babies and toddlers the Centurion studio is calm, warm and free of weather. For older children, a park, a garden or the family's own back yard gives them space to run and gives the photographs a sense of place. The location guide lists spots that work well around Centurion and Pretoria, and the studio versus location guide weighs up the two.

Afterwards

Your gallery arrives within roughly two weeks, edited, in full resolution, and yours to keep. Family sessions produce a lot of small moments, so the gallery is curated rather than dumped: the frames where everyone is looking at the camera, and the ones where nobody is but the moment is right.