Making Photo Shoots Fun | Utah Family Photographer

TGIF :: It’s Friday. Get fired up. 

Tis the season for family photo shoots.  The foliage is out & about, high school seniors are starting their college applications (making parents nostalgic to freeze *this moment*), and the holiday card rush is about to hit.  This time of year is awesome because it brings me into contact with families I’ve photographed previously (and I love my clients) as well as new families that I’ll hopefully work with for years to come.  It’s great getting to know the parents, and it’s especially amazing seeing the kids annually, noting how much they’ve changed & grown into iterations of the adults they’ll eventually become.  I can honestly say that V & I leave shoots with huge smiles on our faces and feel invigorated.  Really.

While I was scouting a location for the family session I’m shooting this evening, this American Pie photo came to mind.   Not because I think it’s a super awesome photo (although, it is priceless on many levels) but because, when Jim’s Dad catches Jim looking at it one day, he says to his son (something like), “That was a fun day, wasn’t it?’

I’m grateful that I’ve had several clients tell me after our shoots that they had fun.  I already know that V & I have fun, but the first few times clients said they had a good time, it surprised me.  Maybe cuz the family shoot experience is stigma’d as being dumb or stressful or methodical.  But, that’s not how I run my shoots, and I guess I realized: wait, yeah, this *is* fun — or, at least, it really should be.  The shoot itself captures a person or family or celebration at this particular date and time, the client’s reality at this moment.  But, more than that, the shoot affords people an opportunity to enjoy that moment.  It’s an hour or so with only your family, your partner, your sibling, your friends (… and, well, me & V) — an hour out of your life to do nothing but enjoy one another.  Laugh stupidly.  Hug/cuddle/love/high five/be intimate/relax, together.  Yeah, there’s a camera; but that’s even more reason to be nice to one another and delight in this time together so, for all of posterity, you have a tangible memory of the people that are most meaningful to you right now.   I kinda love that, and, yeah, it should be fun.

So, that’s what I’ve come to recognize is an important part of a Carla Boecklin photo shoot experience.  I want you to look at the photo — even years later — and think to yourself, ‘that was a fun day, wasn’t it?’