Looking to have your extended family captured during? We do this often on Hilton Head Island, where so many families will meet up from all over the country to enjoy a vacation with the whole extended family. Some families are smaller than others, and some have up to 10 kids among the original immediate family kids. Regardless we love capturing them, big or small.
How long should I plan for a session?
This question we leave up to you! But here are some insights into them! An hour and a half to have photos captured might seem like it is what you need, but if we are being honest when it comes to a larger family, especially with little ones an hour and a half can seem a bit too long for everyones attention span. We recommend no more than one hour. During this hour we like to split you up into your small immediate families and spend some time capturing you kind of like a mini family session. We spent about 10-15 minutes per immediate family and capture you like we would for a regular family session. This is a great time to also get to capture those beautiful memories of you and your kids as the focus. After we complete that, we go into additional groupings, often including grandparents and kids, all the cousins, the original immediate family, etc. And finally we grab all of you to capture those full extended family portraits. We often either do this first or last, depending on if you chose a sunrise or sunset session because the lighting is the best for a large group photo. And to round out the session we love just grabbing candid photos. Play with the kids, let them run around and play with each other. Just be the family that you are and pretend someone isn’t there snapping photos. This is a time to be purely you. And oftentimes its the photos that you will come to cherish the most later on.
Additionally, we do offer a 30 minute session if you aren’t interested in anything candid and just want to grab those traditional look at the camera portraits of your group and immediate families.
How to dress for your session
Dressing for an extended family session can be a bit harder than just an immediate family because of all the people. What we recommend doing is choosing a color palette, anywhere from 3-4 colors and having everyone coordinate between those. You want to make sure you aren’t completely matching your own family, so we usually recommend choosing those colors and then creating your outfits based on your immediate family. This usually helps them even out for an entire group. Decide whether you are going with a dressier option or causal and then plan from there! We never recommend completely matching one to one with each other!
Preparing for your session
If you are coming from different areas just make sure everyone has the correct time and address available, planning to arrive about 10 minutes before the session begins. This will allow time for the whole group to make their way out to the location to begin on time.
Don’t sweat it. With extended family sessions, there is bound to be someone that isn’t happy that day. It is totally ok! The beauty of extended family sessions is there are plenty of opportunities for people to not be in front of the camera. Just know that sessions never go perfectly, and just because someone isn’t happy doesn’t mean photos won’t turn out great!
Don’t expect to have photos upon photos that are picture perfect. When you have 20 people in a photo, it can be difficult to have everyone looking and smiling at the camera for more than one or two shots. What you can do is make sure you are listening to your photographer and when they say ok everyone look this way and smile, do it! Don’t worry about your kids, etc.
Have fun and enjoy the time!
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