What time should I schedule my family photo session?
What time is the best time to schedule my family’s photo session? And why does my photographer always want to schedule so late during summer? What are some tips for scheduling a session? All great questions! Find out more here.
What time should I schedule my family photo session? What’s the best time to take pictures? Or why do we have to do our session so late? Are all questions I get asked when families are looking to schedule their sessions (especially in summer). I’m here to answer all these questions and MORE!
The short answer to what time is the best time for photos is about an hour to an hour and a half before sunset. This is called golden hour, and it makes for beautiful, dreamy photos like the one directly above.
But that’s so LATE! Is a complaint parents with young children commonly have. And that’s true, at the height of summer sessions often don’t start until after 7 pm. With littles that can be super tricky, and here’s some suggestions.
Let’s plan your session for earlier in the evening! We can choose locations that are shaded and still capture beautiful images. Note, we don’t get the sunset/golden hour images - they will still be beautiful but they will have a different tone and feel.
Wait until later in summer or early fall to book your session. As the days shorten golden hour comes earlier as well!
Wing it! Plan the session anyway - I will help keep the kids engaged and active during the session. Feed the kiddos supper a little later than normal and give them an extra snack or treat before the session to help keep energy levels up.
The season, time of day, weather and location will impact the images you receive during your session. For example - the wooded image on this page was taken during the morning in late Spring (with rain threatening the whole time), the field picture with the little kids was taken mid summer at golden hour, and the picture below was taken in the afternoon during fall. All these sessions were amazing, and yours will be too! Each of these families had a different vision in mind for their session, I’d love to hear what yours is! :)
Maternity Self Portrait
Photography by Brooke did a maternity self portrait! North Central Wi Photographer, North Central WI Maternity Photographer, Merrill WI Maternity Photographer, Wausau Wi Maternity Photographer, Weston Wi Maternity Photographer, Antigo Wi Maternity Photographer
Keep scrolling to see the end result!
I am not a person who loves to take selfies, or post a lot of pictures of myself. In general, I’d much rather be the person behind the camera than in front of it. The downside of this, is that I don’t have a lot of pictures of myself and my kids together. And virtually no pictures of any of my four pregnancies. I decided that when I was pregnant with my son, things would be a little different.
For me, I am never more self conscious than when I’m pregnant. I have never felt like I had the cute, perfect baby bump. When I was pregnant with my first two daughters, I couldn’t afford maternity pictures. And then when I was pregnant with babies number three, and again with number four I was too nervous to do them with another photographer. Thus the brilliant idea was formed - I would take maternity self portraits! I am a photographer after all! How hard can it be?
Really hard.
At the time, my husband and I had just sold our first home and had several houses we were trying to buy fall through on us. We were in a cramped, old, dark, not very attractive apartment (as you can clearly see in the before). There was no room for my studio, or really very much of anything. Definitely no room for my studio setup. In short, things had not gone according to plan. I’m telling you this to set the stage of what I had to work with.
I was bound and determined to make it work! I pulled my backdrop stand out of storage, found a roll of my seamless paper and set to work. In my head, it would be simple and I could knock out these maternity pictures in an hour or so. Learn from my mistakes, don’t try it yourself. I spent the better part of the afternoon fighting with my setup, tripod, and shutter trigger trying to get something usable. When I called it a day and uploaded the images to my editing program, I realized I had some hard work ahead.
I had the best of intentions to edit the images right away, I did not. It actually took me about nine months (oops!). To edit just ONE maternity image! Life has this funny way of ruining the best of intentions sometimes. Between kids, school, my day job, my photography, moving, having a baby. . . . . . . I just never got around to it.
Guys, moral of the story. Hire someone to help you get beautiful maternity pictures you’ll want to treasure forever. You will be stressed enough trying to prepare for your new baby, navigating the changes in your body, along with all the other stressors and obligations life brings. Let me help take one of those burdens off of your shoulders.