The Shit Show That Is The Family Portrait

Let me just say… Family portraits can be a real shit show sometimes. Especially when they are your own family and you are doing the photography.

In general getting a group of people together and trying to get them all to look good at the same split second, is by no means impossible, but it does present it’s challenges from time to time. Throw in a couple of young children and the fact you’re doing it all with a remote camera trigger as the lighting conditions are changing by the minute… Well you just upped the ante by 10. Basically I have to feel that everybody is making a good face before I push the button and then hope they stay in the same place as I wait 5-6 seconds for the flash to recycle before the next photo.

The whole experience can be summed up in the main photo above. After looking through about a dozen test images I did for lighting, my wife & I came across this insane photo of my wife sneezing, our youngest sticking his fingers down his throat and our oldest planking, with his head out of view.The complete randomness of this had us in stitches as we were going through and trying to pick out a winner for this year’s holiday cards.

Below is a few more test and real shots that show the complete randomness that is the making of a family portrait. I have to say I almost love some of the outtakes more than the keepers.

I’m not even going to lie, somewhere in the middle of the shoot, my oldest decided he wanted to recreate the elevator scene from Gangnam Style.

I’m pretty sure I thought “Nailed it” when I pushed the shutter here.

Time to get the sillies out.

Believe it, or not. This was the last photo I took and pretty much said right after I pushed the button. “We’re done. Hopefully we got a few good ones.” Close friends & family, if you are reading this chances are this what you’ll see on our holiday card this year.

I might have to admit that the main reason I wanted to create a 4th blog separate from my commercial, wedding, & documentary work is because those are very specific blogs and I wanted to be able to say whatever I wanted and not have it directly connected to my websites. Which is double speak for wanting to be able to swear, be snarky and in general say shit you’re not suppose to say as a professional photographer. Oops.

Cheers,

Vincent D. Johnson