Generation Portraiture

Background

This is my family - my nan, mum, sister, niece and great niece.  Five generations of beautiful women in our family.  How fortunate I am to have all of these wonderful women in my life. I'm a photographer right so it must have been easy to make this happen.  Um I don't think so. My niece and great niece live interstate, my mum and nan will do anything to avoid having their photo taken, my nan point blank refused to have professional hair and make up done (which meant that no one else had theirs done either), and just try explaining to them why they needed to co-orindate clothing (except for bubby) and why arms should be covered! Oh and I was given about 15 minutes in total for all the photos to be taken.  My nan - bless her - thought it was over after just a couple of frames.  Oh and while we love each other - we find it hard to express and show love and don't often get into each other's personal space.

Despite the resistance and arguing with the photographer (me) - because that's what families do - we were all thrilled with the result and I will be forever grateful that our family has these images for generations to come. 

Getting it together

So how long have you been saying - 'We really must get our family together for some professional family photographs?"  - and not just mum, dad and the kids, but extended family - grand parents and great grandparents. I understand the challenges of co-ordinating a family photo session but I guarantee it will be worth the effort.  After all it's not really about us - we exist in images for our children and their children.

For our family this session was about how fortunate we are to have five generations of women but every family is different.  It may be the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, it may be about one grandparent like the environmental portrait I did below of my grandfather, or it may be about siblings.  Whatever the composition of your family make the effort to record your family history in images every 1 -2 years.  

Where do we start?

A great place to start is to

• work out the family members who will be participating in your photo session
• discuss a suitable date/time 
• chat about the type of images you would like - studio (more classic feel), outdoors (more relaxed and candid shots)
• the type of images will also determine the type of clothing to wear
• think about what you intend to do with the images (prints, wall art, albums, digital images)
• call your photographer to discuss your needs and book a session

Sandra Lee Photography is based in Wheelers Hill.  We photograph on location around Melbourne and also shoot in studios in Caulfield South and Wantirna South.  We can be contacted at the office on ph: 95453228 or Sandra directly on ph: 0418330806