I’ve known Sara for 10+ years so it was a privilege to shoot her and Rigo’s engagement photos! It was a wild ride to even meet up and schedule the shoot—involving escaping the rain and meeting up at a random park chosen on Google Maps while both of us were on cross country road trips. Not to mention these were only shot on an iPhone!
Love this multi generational family photo setting near a peaceful pond on the family acreage.
We recently got our family photos done by the sweet photographer who captured my maternity photos and our baby’s birth earlier this year. You can see her work at lcbirthstories.com!
Working with her multiple times was really nice for our family because our toddlers got more familiar and comfortable with her. At the maternity shoot in April, my son was literally just running away when we were trying to pose. Hahah but not.
As we planned our family photos this fall, Lauren was amazing in helping plan what colors would be best for our family and skin tones, and she helped get me started in ideas for outfits for the whole family.
Getting familiar with your best colors is a good place to start when planning family photos! The Color Key is a great resource for learning more about this.
These are the main colors we worked with for our family session: warm creams and browns, some forest green on me and more of a faded green on my son, a rusty orange for my daughter’s dress, and some blues.
I’d recommend to start with planning Mom’s outfit first. This will be the anchor that you’ll coordinate all the other outfits to.
From there, choose where to incorporate any patterns and the other coordinating colors for the rest of the family members’ outfits.
Just one person should be wearing a pattern, and you can incorporate more textures and layers for adding visual interest, like lace, or a chunky knit sweater. These add more to the overall look, but won’t be overwhelming or conflicting like another pattern would be.
I had my daughter wear a cute floral patterned dress, and I took up the hem to hit right above her knee. Having the right hem length on a knee length dress makes such a difference!
Our son wore his favorite green pants (leftover from the maternity shoot outfits) and a cable knit sweater. I was torn between a cream colored Henley shirt but I’m glad I went with the sweater.
On a trip to Washington, I found some amazing leather soft-sole moccasins that I had the twins wear again.
I wanted baby boy in overalls, but needed to tie in the blue that I was having Dad wear, so I got a blue top from another outfit for him.
Being the busy mom that I am, I ended up having to last minute shop on Amazon Prime for a few pieces to complete our look (along with some items we already had in our closets!)
I put together a moodboard with shoppable links, in case you’re needing some inspiration for your own family photos!
I’m thankful that Amazon Prime came through for us and we got everything in time. And I’m so happy with how everything came together!
Shop Our Look (or similar), all found on Prime!
For any of my photography clients, creating a moodboard and planning outfits, colors, poses and location is all part of the process I’ll help you with!
Edgewood Historical Park, TX
Circa 2012: I shoot portraits, travel, events, and little bits of every day of life, in both film and digital, ever since I could afford to develop rolls of film at the 1 hr photo store.
It’s a wonder this photoshoot even happened, one day AFTER my friend’s due date, and in the middle of a quarantine period (ah, 2020). So, we shot them socially distanced in her backyard during the most beautiful Texas sunset.
This friend is a superhero mama. Her baby was almost 11 pounds y’all.
Elicia Wetstein 