Where will we take our family portraits?

‘Below are three options, available, where we can shoot your family portraits:

• Outdoor Sessions are the most popular, because the kids have room to play, run, and be themselves. You can view some of the best Omaha area locations for outdoor sessions here.

• Another option is a Lifestyle Session, in your home and/or your backyard. And no, your house doesn’t have to be perfectly clean!

• Alternatively, your family portraits can be done in our Studio to create traditional, classic, fine art portraits. Clients who choose this genre tend to focus on creating large prints or collections of prints to be displayed in their home. Many times these images are also done in black and white or a very classic editing style.

Have any other venues in mind for you portrait session? We can discuss all location options during the pre-session meeting; I’ll help you decide which is the best location to tell your story.

We are looking for a mixture of candid and posed family photos. Can you do both?

Absolutely! My storytelling style, for outdoor and in-home lifestyle sessions, leans toward a candid, documentary approach, but also includes posed family portraits, where everyone is smiling and looking at the camera. I work both kinds of photographs into these sessions.……any of the images could become treasured keepsakes. Studio sessions are more posed, and include additional, more dramatic, fine art creations.

What should we wear to the portrait session?

It depends on the session location, style of portraits you want and what you’re going to do with the prints. But here a few general tips:

• Coordinating, not matching! Pick a couple of colors and choose clothes that will fit in this color scheme.

• Stay away from bold patterns, writing or characters on shirts, and make sure the clothes fit well. These can all be distractions in the finished portraits. Limit patterns.

• Avoid all white and all black.

We can discuss clothing options during the pre-session meeting.

Once you book your session, start thinking what to wear for family photos right away. If you wait until the day of or day before you may run into an issue of clothes not fitting, being dirty, or need to be dry cleaned.

How much time should we schedule for a family portrait session?

The standard session lasts between 1 to 1-1/2 hours. I will keep shooting as long as I’m getting great shots. Kids have about 45 minutes of energy (and patience) for family photos, so the best shots are often captured right at the start of the session. I like to keep the end of the session for candid and un-posed photographs. That’s a good time to catch the kids playing and having fun. Those images, many times, end up being the most memorable.

I saw these cute pictures on Pinterest. Can we do those?

I love Pinterest as much as the next person! But Pinterest is best used as an initial source of inspiration, rather than a strict guideline for your photographer. If we’re focused on recreating someone else’s photos, that will leave us less time to create shots that showcase the unique aspects of your family.

If you do want to use Pinterest to help you plan your session, look at it as general inspiration — for instance, use it to figure out what style of photos you like, and I’ll work to include the style in our session. We can review your example Pinterest boards during our pre-session meeting.