When children are little, we photograph everything.
The first day of school. The missing teeth. The new uniform that’s two sizes too big because “they’ll grow into it”. The annual school photograph. Birthdays. Christmas. Holidays. That random Tuesday when they looked particularly cute eating spaghetti.
Our phones are absolutely bursting with them.
And then, somewhere along the way, we stop.
Not completely, obviously. There are still phone photos. Holiday snaps. Birthday pictures. Maybe the occasional family selfie where somebody’s arm is six feet long and at least one person is looking at the wrong camera.
But those proper photographs of your family together?
They become much less frequent.
And I think part of the reason is that we’ve somehow decided family photography is for families with young children.
It really isn’t.
They might be grown up. They’re still your kids.
This photograph sums up this entire blog for me.
Three grown adults.
Also: three siblings.
No matter how old they get, that relationship is still there. In fact, it has probably collected another twenty years of stories, arguments, in-jokes, shared history and things nobody outside the family would remotely understand.
Yet how many photographs do you have of your children together now that they’re adults?
Not photographs from somebody’s wedding.
Not one taken across the Christmas dinner table.
Not the three of them standing awkwardly beside each other because you shouted, “WAIT! Let me get a photo!” just as somebody was trying to leave.
An actual photograph of them together.
Exactly.
There isn’t an age when your relationship stops being worth photographing
I photograph lots of mums with babies.
Lots of mums with toddlers.
Lots of mums with children who still need to be bribed with biscuits.
But motherhood doesn’t end when they become taller than you.
The relationship changes, of course. The person who once needed you to tie their shoelaces may now be the one explaining how your new phone works.
But they’re still your child.
And you’re still their mum.
That deserves to exist in photographs too.
The same goes for dads.
We’re very good at photographing parents with their children when the children are small, then gradually the individual relationships seem to disappear from the camera roll.
You don’t need a milestone.
You don’t need a new baby.
You don’t need to wait until somebody gets married.
Sometimes this is what our family looks like right now is reason enough.
“But won’t it all feel a bit... posed?”
Nope.
Well, alright. There will probably be a bit of posing.
I’m a photographer. There are limits. 😂
Yes, I’ll get the lovely photograph where everybody is looking at me.
The one Mum wants on the wall.
The one Granny will probably request a copy of.
And then…
…we’ll get this one.
Because being grown up doesn’t suddenly make siblings sensible.
Thank goodness.
Those dynamics that existed when you were 8, 10 and 12 have a funny habit of reappearing when you put everyone together again.
And those are often the photographs I love most.
There’s a funny gap in the family photo album
Teenagers get photographed constantly.
Just not necessarily by us.
There are selfies. Photos with friends. Snapchat. TikTok. Pictures before parties and proms.
But photographs with Mum? Dad? Their siblings?
Suddenly there aren’t nearly as many.
We diligently record the first years of our children’s lives and then, as they become teenagers and young adults, the photographic record can get a little… patchy.
And yet these are enormous years.
They’re changing.
Finding out who they are.
Developing interests and personalities that are completely their own.
That deserves documenting too.
Let them bring some of themselves with them
Family photography with older children doesn’t have to mean everyone dressing alike and sitting beautifully with their hands in their laps.
Please don’t. I’ll feel like I’ve wandered into the wrong studio.
If they’re into sport, music, gaming, dance, books or something gloriously niche that you don’t entirely understand, we can use it.
Because the point isn’t simply to record what they looked like at this age.
It’s to capture a little bit of who they were.
The things that matter to them now might change completely in five years.
That’s exactly why they’re worth photographing.
And sometimes you get everyone together
This is where family photographs become something else entirely.
Four generations.
One photograph.
When you’re standing in front of my camera, it might simply feel like a nice thing to do while everybody is together.
But photographs have a habit of becoming more important with time.
Years from now, nobody is going to care whether somebody thought their hair wasn’t behaving that day.
They won’t care that someone nearly didn’t come because they “hate having their photo taken”.
They’ll just be incredibly glad the photograph exists.
Because one day, the photograph isn’t really about how old anyone was at all.
It’s about the fact that everyone was here, at the same time, and you thought to take the photograph.
Although grown-up siblings are still siblings...
Right, enough sentimentality.
Here we have three perfectly respectable grown men.
Lovely.
Handsome.
Civilised.
Their families must be very proud.
Approximately five minutes later…
…there they are. 😂
And THAT is why I love photographing adult siblings.
You can acquire jobs, mortgages, partners and sensible shoes.
Put the siblings back together and suddenly everybody is 14 again.
I want both photographs.
The one your mum proudly puts on the wall and the one that makes the whole family say, “Yep. That’s them.”
Your family didn't stop being a family when the children grew up
There’s no cut-off point for family photography.
Your children don’t become too old.
Your family isn’t suddenly less photographable because there are no toddlers involved.
And you certainly don’t have to wait until a wedding comes along before everybody gets in front of a proper camera again.
Maybe your children are teenagers.
Maybe they’re at university.
Maybe they’ve moved away and getting everyone in the same postcode now requires military-level diary coordination.
Maybe they’ve got partners and children of their own.
That’s not the end of your family story.
It’s the next bit.
And it’s worth photographing.
When was your last proper family photograph?
Not a selfie.
Not somebody’s wedding.
Not one person missing because they were behind the camera.
A photograph of your family as it looks now.
If you’re struggling to remember, perhaps that’s your answer.
My family sessions can include teenagers, grown-up children, siblings, grandparents and multiple generations. They can take place in my Auchterarder studio or outdoors, and we’ll make sure we get the photographs for the mantelpiece and the ones that actually feel like your family.
