Families

Man, I love some unity & group cohesion. Family in particular can be incredibly useful to all involved, if the fates can be wrangled to optimize it. This is not always attainable. I understand the many reasons for a good old fashioned earth-scorching & bridge burning. But it's incredibly satisfying when cooperation is within reach, and many people take family photos because they're making that effort.

(Some people take family photos as an assertion of dominance and flossing as the self-proclaimed head of household, for the self-promotional idealization of their own lifestyle on the 'gram rather than a sincere motivation toward cohesion and empathy. But I try not to work with those people, because they won't like what microexpressions & body language reveals and I'm not big on coercing nonconsensual displays of affection for anyone's bragging rights.)

Not all families are dysfunctional.

The camera doesn't lie. Sometimes a photoshoot is directing non-actors to perform credibly. That is never more daunting than when called upon to shoot the Hatfield & McCoys family reunion. The trick is actually convincing them to sincerely like each other, for a little bit, at least long enough to make it believable.

Orrrr...leaning into it structurally for dramatic effect. No! No, sorry, that was my shoulder devil talking.

It's SO cool when people like each other. Oh my lawd. Ohhh man. How heartening.

But it's almost as cool when they DON'T and yet inroads into mediation are made over the course of a portrait session.

Also, babies. Man, basically everyone's pretty stoked about babies, so that's an easy win if the baby is cute. That makes family photos with babies pretty easy, except that I don't really like babies, and they can sense it and sob. But once in awhile someone has a crazy cool baby & I'll do the shoot, because the baby & I are chill with each other.

(It's not the tiny person who's bad; it's just the restrictions of the life phase that show them to us not at their best, and I lack the maternal pull to override an inherent revulsion toward tiny altricial humanoids when said humanoid is standard for their age demographic. They sense this, or my inner evil or whatever, and sob uncontrollably.)

Animal wrangling is considerably less challenging for me than human baby wrangling, arguably because they know I love them.

Also, toddlers are wonderful. I friggin' love toddler portraits. They're generally so expressive and natural, with dynamic body language and their wonderment or whatever moods fill up the lens, making everything larger than life; it's so cool. It's a fun age.

Surprisingly not a lot. I've mostly chosen awesome clients with awesome families who almost never take their wrath out on me.

Frankly, pets are usually chill, too.

I had a few families with major in-fighting, and I've had people try to renegotiate their contract at the shoot when I was provisioned for a different scope, but mostly, people are somewhat held hostage by their vanity if nothing else. haha Mostly they're surprisingly great, though. This job really makes me love people most of the time. It's pretty life-affirming.

I don't know, #blessed or whatever. Maybe it helps to have a neutral party. Maybe that's what they all wanted and needed. I really love it.