What Is Lifestyle Family Photography?
You may not know it, but most of the family photography sessions are actually lifestyle family photography sessions. Lifestyle family photography sessions are relatively short, about an hour. They are guided by the photographers a lot. The goal of a lifestyle family session is to capture the family dynamic and show the family connections and love as much as possible in a short period of time.
We do a lot of things with our kids in our everyday life. During a one hour photo session, you might not do all these things. That’s when the photographer will guide and remind you to do all these things so the photographer can capture the moments when it happens. Let me show you some examples to explain this.
Lifestyle Family Photography Example: Tickling
Tickling happens very often in my family. My toddler would like tickling all the time. But if I take her outside for a family photography session, or just stay home for a lifestyle family session for an hour. My little one probably won’t ask me to tickle her at all. We would not have those emotional and fun photos of smiling and laughing during the tickling activity. As we know that tickling is what could happen during our everyday life, photographers will try to set up this scene and ask the family to gently tickle each other. It is not posed. Photographers direct you and your family to tickle, and then capture the real and authentic moments from there. Tickling is something that would happen even if the photographer wasn’t there.
Lifestyle Family Photography Example: Toss Them Up
It is very common that parents sometimes lift their children up and down to make them laugh and happy. Young kids tend to love that too. When this happens, both parents and the children are very silly and happy. Photographers will set up the scene, choose a good and clean background, ask parents to stand back to back, and then ask the parents to lift their kids up. Photographers will then be there to capture whatever moments it will happen after the set up. Again, you would do this with your kids in your everyday life once for a while even if the photographer wasn’t there. You might not do that during the one hour session if the photographer didn’t remind you to do that.
There are tons of examples like this that would show us your family dynamic but you might not do that on your own during our photography session. I will communicate with you before our session to get to your family and prepare to guide you to do some of these things during our photo session.
Lifestyle vs Traditional
From the two examples, you might know what lifestyle family photography is. It normally lasts an hour. During this hour, I will guide you through different set ups and activities, then I will be there to capture all the moments. You can see that it is very different from the traditional studio portraits in which the photographer will pose you heavily. For example, during my lifestyle family photography, I might still tell you where to put your hands, ask you to stand closer together, or ask you to talk to each other. But I won’t post you heavily.
My directions for you are to try to make you comfortable and relaxed so you can be yourself and have the real emotion automatically. So that we can preserve the beauty or chaos of your everyday life as a family. Also, most lifestyle family photos won’t be look-at-camera photos. Lifestyle family photography wants to bring back the love and connections between your family in your real life. In your real life, you won’t look at the camera all the time either. The traditional photos would be look-at-camera type of photos.
Capturing Fleeting Moments
Life is short. Kids grow so fast. While you are busy with your everyday life and expect your child to grow sooner so you can get out of the tough parenting zone, you kids are actually growing so fast that you would be regretful when you notice that. You will regret that I should spend more time with them, take them to more places and do more activities, try to remember better what they look like when they are little, try to remember the stories when they are little. No worries. Family photography as a visual narrative would help you. Lifestyle family photography could be a more affordable way to help you freeze the moments and preserve your moments because it is more efficient and lasts about an hour. One photo session a year is still always better than zero session a year. You can put your photos into an album and pass down to generations, allowing future members to learn their heritage.
If you are interested in a lifestyle family photography session, please contact Ivy Lulu Photography. You can also explore my investment page to learn more about my photography pricing. If you want to learn more about what to expect in an outdoor family photography session, you can read the blog post here.
XOXO – Ivy Lulu Photography
ABOUT IVY LULU PHOTOGRAPHY
Ivy Lulu Photography specializes in lifestyle and documentary family photography and couple photography in Westborough Massachusetts and many of the surrounding areas. These include but are not limited to Northborough, Southborough, Shrewsbury, Grafton, North Grafton, Hopkinton, Upton, Marlborough, Framingham, and Worcester. She also services Boston area, and Cape Cod. Her style is very relaxed and natural. Your family session will feel like a stress-free day going on a walk with old friends, who just happen to have a camera with them.
