Outdoor Family Session
An outdoor family session is a great way to commemorate your family’s growth and development year after year. Family photography is appreciated later on when you look back to when your children were small and share the funny story of that day. What we forget about all those years later is how most family outings with young children are stressful and someone almost always ends up in tears. Photography sessions are no different. In addition to having to be on time, you need to bring the appropriate clothing and hope they don’t get ruined along the way, remember to bring snacks, extra diapers, wipes, a stroller, backup clothing, ‘nice’ shoes, and the list goes on. This huge list is just for the child. As a mom and wife, the task usually falls on us to also prepare our partners and ourselves. If you’re exhausted just reading this, welcome to the gong show of producing an outdoor family session. Pinky promise it will be worth it though.
What to Expect from a Toddler
From 10+ years of working with families, I have come to the conclusion that toddlers are wild and feral humans. We are mere passengers in raising a child. You cannot control them, like at all. They don’t understand the concept of time, much like many adults, because it is a taught social construct. They prefer immediate gratification over future gratification. They do not perform for you or smile nicely because you asked. No amount of chocolate or ice cream will save you. You will be lucky if they don’t throw a hissy-fit over being carried or picked up, because they are too independent and don’t like being constricted. They don’t care if you have other appointments or plans beyond your session. These are givens. There’s no way around this. This is a toddler in a nutshell.
Outdoor Family Session Timing
The worst thing you can do is time the session around their bedtime or nap. Guaranteed tantrums and stressed parents. No matter how good of a poker face you have, your stress and emotions can be read all over your face in the photos. There is a magic time between dinner and bed that coordinates with the sun setting, and that’s when you strike. In our session, I suggested bringing extra snacks since dinner was cut short.
Unfortunately, sessions during the day don’t have the same magic as sunset sessions. If you want full magic in your outdoor family session photos, it has to be at sunset. Every toddler is different, some have more tolerance for staying up and being social than others.
Rules for Toddlers
Approach the toddler and family with caution when meeting for the first time. I often completely ignore the child at first to say hello to the parents and introduce myself. I always want to come across as warm, positive, and bubbly when saying hello. Why? Because they are watching you. You have about 3 seconds to make a good impression on a toddler. Depending if they are social or shy, they will respond accordingly.
You have to respect the life phase the child is in and play into it. Children at this age don’t like being restricted and don’t like being told no. Having an outdoor family session is the best scenario because we are free to play and explore the park. Make the child believe you are on their side and want to play. A lot of the poses captured are play-based to keep the child engaged. Intermittently we incorporate some still poses because they won’t mind if you’re filling their tank in other ways.
Go with the flow. Let the toddler lead the session. As such, the worst thing you can do is get into a power struggle with a 2-year-old. You will lose. In addition, the parents will be upset. No one wants to get ready for 2 hours and schlep their child in traffic and fight for parking to have a failed session. Failure is not an option.
Managing expectations is huge. The parents know their child, and they hope that you have some secret power to make their child act completely different than normal. It’s not realistic. I can engage with your child, if they let me, and guide them to what I want them to do. Whether they do it is another story. Sometimes the magic happens organically on its own, you just have to know when to sit back and let it unfold – such as in our session. Nothing was working except letting little miss thang do her thang.
The images that were taken this day are now lovingly hung on this family’s living room wall. View the POST.
To explore other types of family photography, click HERE
Follow me on INSTAGRAM to add pretty outdoor family session portraits to your feed