On-location family portraits in Stanley Park

This combined headshot and family portrait session was a truly memorable one with one heck of an incredibly beautiful group of human beings. This family was in Vancouver for vacation over the summer and they told me during their session that it was a particularly special time for them as all 3 kids are grown and live in different cities. So to have everyone together for these family portraits was especially meaningful for them.

Photo of a family with 3 adult children and 2 adults. Photographed under an arbour in Stanley Park, Vancouver. Photographed by Laura Sosner. — Family portrait photographed on location at Stanley Park in Vancouver, BC. ©Laura Sosner Photography. All rights reserved.

I always like to do a consultation with my clients before the day of their photo shoot and did so with mom before the day of this one. The briefing was this:

They wanted a few family portraits with everyone together (including a walking action shot).
The daughter had requested a photo with mom and a photo with dad.
Mom also thought a few individual photos of the kids might be a good idea (on the day of the photo shoot I learned from the daughter that the colour she wanted to work with is pink, and luckily had a pink flower backdrop for her that was located conveniently about 20 feet away from us).

At the consultation, we also discussed wardrobe. My recommendation was to have 2 or 3 colours within the same colour family so that there would be some visual variety on camera between their outfits while still remaining visually cohesive and complimentary to each other (while I have seen other photographers successfully photograph families in matching shirts before, for me it’s just a little too matchy, matchy and not my personal preference when doing a family photo shoot).

First up, we started under the arbour (in the above photo). Then a photo of mom and dad: