My husband and I own Popinvasion. We started Popinvasion as a media company that provides services to businesses such as photography and videography, but having a growing family, we decided to also use our gear to capture Pittsburgh Family Photos and Weddings, too. With it being family photo season, we figured we’d write a blog about it!
1) What do we wear? It’s tempting to go with fun, colorful prints and patterns when picking outfits for fun family photos, but we promise, your family is already as beautiful and colorful as it is, so we suggest muted colors so that your personalities and beautiful faces pop!
2) When and Where should we go? We usually pick locations that are going to be less crowded, over ones that would be maybe more picturesque. Or, we pick times that we know aren’t going to be as crowded at popular places. Less crowded locations make the session more relaxed for families, especially if the kids aren’t cooperating, and less distracting for the kiddos. We like to leave the location entirely up to your taste, and convenience, but we’ll weigh in if you want suggestions! And as far as the time of day planned, we should absolutely pick the time that you find your kids to be in the best moods.
3) How do we make our kids cooperate? Any parent knows, that even though we plan sessions around naps, make sure the little ones are well fed, and pick a place that’s fun for everyone, sometimes we’re still not catching the best moods. So, we now offer prizes from the prize bags for good behavior. We’ll tell the kiddos that if they listen to mom and dad throughout the session, mom and dad get to decide at the end whether they can pick a prize from our prize bag! It’s usually simple things like costume jewelry, or puzzles, or stickers, or whatever we may think your kiddos are into! And please, know that we have little ones of our own, and totally understand when kids just aren’t into it, so no need at all to stress. If we see the kids just don’t wanna pose, we’ll roll with it and turn the session more into photojournalism and try to catch the action as it happens!
4) Keep everybody involved. After we have the family photo of the whole group, we try to mix and match combinations, by taking pictures of just the kids, just the sisters, just the parents, just a parents with the kids, etc…we try to keep everyone involved the whole time. So, when Family sessions are one of our favorite things to do. We love playing with the kiddos, and trying to make the family portrait experience into a fun family outing, rather than a forced portrait session. Often parents ask us for tips and tricks on making the session as fruitful as possible, and the kiddos as cooperative as possible, so we figured we’d blog about it!
1) What do we wear? It’s tempting to go with fun, colorful prints and patterns when picking outfits for fun family photos, but we promise, your family is already as beautiful and colorful as it is, so we suggest muted colors so that your personalities and beautiful faces pop!
2) When and Where should we go? We usually pick locations that are going to be less crowded, over ones that would be maybe more picturesque. Or, we pick times that we know aren’t going to be as crowded at popular places. Less crowded locations make the session more relaxed for families, especially if the kids aren’t cooperating, and less distracting for the kiddos. We like to leave the location entirely up to your taste, and convenience, but we’ll weigh in if you want suggestions! And as far as the time of day planned, we should absolutely pick the time that you find your kids to be in the best moods.
3) How do we make our kids cooperate? Any parent knows, that even though we plan sessions around naps, make sure the little ones are well fed, and pick a place that’s fun for everyone, sometimes we’re still not catching the best moods. So, we now offer prizes from the prize bags for good behavior. We’ll tell the kiddos that if they listen to mom and dad throughout the session, mom and dad get to decide at the end whether they can pick a prize from our prize bag! It’s usually simple things like costume jewelry, or puzzles, or stickers, or whatever we may think your kiddos are into! And please, know that we have little ones of our own, and totally understand when kids just aren’t into it, so no need at all to stress. If we see the kids just don’t wanna pose, we’ll roll with it and turn the session more into photojournalism and try to catch the action as it happens!
4) Keep everybody involved. After we have the family photo of the whole group, we try to mix and match combinations, by taking pictures of just the kids, just the sisters, just the parents, just a parents with the kids, etc…we try to keep everyone involved the whole time. So, when we take pictures of the just the kids, we enlist the parents to be directly behind our heads when trying to get the kids to look at the lens. Or, if the kids are old enough for us to take a picture of just the parents, we have them be the clowns behind us to make the moms and dads laugh.
5) Do you have props and poses? We started Popinvasion by providing our photography and videography to businesses, which we very much love doing also. But with having three kids, and going through a few nightmare indoor portrait sessions in mall studios with backdrops, feeling on the verge of stress attacks at times, we looked at each other, and realized we had all the gear to offer family portraits as a fun alternative. Therefore, we absolutely will come along with props and pose ideas and suggest them, and the goal is to get those happening, but we always want to remind mom and dad that props are more special if it’s something that is special to you, and that although we do have ample pose and prop ideas, by all means if they do not feel natural to you, or if the kids just don’t want to do them, we will move and groove with whatever actually represents your family. And by all means, if you have prop and pose ideas from your Pinterest boards, count us in!
And now, with all of that said, we do like to remind you that we usually provide family portraits back to you pretty quickly, so you are absolutely still in time for family portraits for your Holiday cards! Now check out some of our favorites. Can you guess which ones were posed, and which ones are candids? ; – )
