How Can You Personalize Your Family Photoshoot?
Family photos should feel uniquely yours. They hang on your walls, fill your albums, and capture who you are as a family at this moment in time. At Kirvan + Photography, we recently worked with Casy and his family at Centennial Park to create a personalized session that perfectly reflected their family’s personality and style. Here’s how you can make your own family photoshoot truly personal.
Choosing the Right Location for Your Family
Location sets the entire tone for your family photos, so choose somewhere that resonates with you. Casy’s family opted for a forestry look at Centennial Park, taking advantage of the natural beauty of birch trees, autumn foliage, and rustic train tracks. The varied scenery allowed us to create different moods within a single session.
Think about what environments feel right for your family. Studio sessions offer controlled lighting and a classic, timeless aesthetic perfect for formal family portraits. Waterfront locations provide serene backdrops and beautiful natural light, ideal for relaxed, breezy sessions. If you love rustic charm, farm settings deliver fields, barns, and open spaces that work wonderfully for outdoor-loving families. Forest and park locations offer natural beauty with varied textures, paths, and seasonal colors.
For our one-hour sessions, we can incorporate multiple looks within the same location or even combine different nearby settings. The key is selecting places that feel authentic to your family’s lifestyle and interests.
Outfit Selection: Comfort Meets Style
What you wear significantly impacts the final look of your photos. Casy’s family chose coordinated purple tones with pops of coral and pink, creating visual cohesion without looking too matchy or forced. The sweaters were casual and comfortable, perfect for outdoor activities while still looking polished.
Your outfit approach should reflect your family’s personality. Some families prefer dressy, formal attire for sophisticated portraits that work beautifully in studio settings. A fully casual approach with jeans and comfortable sweaters creates relaxed, authentic looks that many families love. Theme-based outfits can add fun and creativity, whether that’s coordinating colors, seasonal themes, or even matching pajamas for playful sessions.
The most important factor is choosing outfits that represent who you actually are. If your family lives in jeans and hoodies, embrace that. Authenticity always translates better in photos than trying to be something you’re not, so go with what feels natural.
Posing for Your Family Dynamic
Posing isn’t about standing stiffly and smiling on cue. It’s about capturing genuine interactions that reflect your family’s real relationships. With Casy’s family, we incorporated plenty of movement and play. The girls threw leaves, climbed on the fence, and interacted naturally with their parents. These moments produced the most authentic, joyful expressions.
Different family compositions call for different approaches. Families with young children benefit from active poses like playing, walking, or interactive games that keep kids engaged and smiling naturally. Couples without children can focus on romantic interactions, walking together, or quiet intimate moments. When pets are part of the family, we incorporate activities the animal enjoys, making everyone more relaxed and natural.
We always balance structured group shots with candid moments. You’ll get those classic “everyone looking at the camera” photos for the mantle, but you’ll also have images of real laughter, genuine affection, and authentic family dynamics.
The Color and Black and White Question
During Casy’s session, we shot both color and black and white images. Each serves a different purpose and creates a different emotional impact. Color photos capture the richness of the season, the coordinated outfits, and the vibrant natural setting. In contrast, black and white images focus purely on emotion, expression, and connection without the distraction of color.
Many families love having both options. Color images work beautifully for modern displays and social media sharing, while black and white photos often feel more timeless and artistic, perfect for classic framed prints. We typically deliver both versions of key shots, giving you flexibility in how you display and share your family memories.
Creating Your Route Through the Session
A successful family session isn’t just one location with one pose repeated. We plan a route that keeps everyone engaged while maximizing the variety in your final gallery. At Centennial Park, we started at the white fence with coordinated poses, moved to the grassy areas for individual parent-child shots, walked to the train tracks for lifestyle walking images, and finished with playful leaf-throwing near the rustic cabin.
This progression served multiple purposes. It kept the kids from getting bored by constantly offering new things to explore. Diverse backdrops for different types of images emerged naturally from this approach. Natural breaks where kids could run around between more structured shots helped maintain their energy and enthusiasm throughout the session.
For families booking our one-hour sessions, this approach ensures you get comprehensive coverage without anyone feeling exhausted or overwhelmed.
Making It Uniquely Yours
The families we photograph at Kirvan + Photography all have different personalities, styles, and preferences. Some want classic, elegant portraits while others prefer adventurous, candid storytelling. The beauty of personalized family photography is that there’s no single right way to do it.
Before your session, think about what matters most to you. Do you want images that feel formal and timeless, or relaxed and contemporary? What locations feel meaningful to your family? Consider what activities make your kids light up and what represents this stage of your family’s journey.
When you book with us, we discuss all these elements to create a session plan that feels completely tailored to your family. The result is a gallery of images that don’t just look beautiful but feel authentically yours.
Contact us to discuss your personalized family session. Whether you envision a forest adventure, waterfront serenity, or classic studio elegance, we’ll help you create images you’ll treasure forever.
