The Ultimate Family/Group Photo Hack
There is no greater time and place for a fabulous hack than during your family portrait session. Why? Because the family photo session is capable of eating away a considerable amount of time, for photographs that although precious and necessary probably should not take too long to shoot. When I first started shooting weddings I would routinely spend more time waiting for family members than actually taking photographs during these sessions. This isn’t ideal as depending on the flow of your day, we would generally be shooting these straight after your ceremony (or just before) and time lost during this session will probably affect your bride and groom portrait session.
The Problem: In most cases, in the moments after (or before) your ceremony you will be emotionally overwhelmed and don’t want to be making decisions about who should (or should not) be in each family photograph. Your mother or father will probably have their own opinions about this, and might be making unhelpful suggestions. On top of that, people will go missing at critical moments, just when they are needed for the photograph.
The Hack: Before the wedding, write a list of all the family groups you would like photographed and the names of all the people in them. You could ask your parents for suggestions also, as these photo’s are often more important to the parents than the couple themselves. Once you have your list let your photographer know how many groups photographs there are on the list and how many people are in the largest group. This is valuable data for your photographer, as they will want to know roughly how much time and how much space and light they need for these photographs.
On the day of the wedding, have 2 copies of this list printed out for the 2 loudest and most obnoxious :) members of each family. They become the official family herders and are responsible for getting the families together for there photos. This is invaluable as your photographer does not have a clue who Aunty Mary or Uncle Bob is.
