They started out thinking outdoors. Wendy had looked at parks, mentioned a lagoon, asked about somewhere with open grass and good light. She was clear about what she didn’t want: nothing that announced itself as Los Angeles. No pier, no Hollywood sign. “None of us have any connections to LA — it doesn’t need to be somewhere symbolic.”
Then, near the end of our call, she worked something out in real time:
“I kind of feel like maybe studio would be better. I’m just envisioning a lot of different preferences for outdoors, and it’s going to be really hard for us to agree on something.”
That’s the part we want other families to hear. The studio wasn’t the safe option or the weather backup. It was the option that removed a decision six jet-lagged adults from three time zones were never going to make quickly.
Outdoors, someone has to pick the place. Someone else has opinions about it. Somebody worries about the walk, or the wind, or whether the grass will be green. A studio takes all of that off the table and leaves you with the only thing that actually matters: everyone in the same room at the same time.
What an adult family session is actually like
This session was marking more than one thing.
Wendy’s parents were celebrating thirty years of marriage. Wendy and her husband had married at the courthouse and haven’t had a wedding — so these are, in a real sense, their first proper photographs as a married couple. Her brother’s girlfriend came too, at her parents’ suggestion. As Wendy put it: he’s probably going to marry her anyway.
Thirty years, three months, and not yet. All in the same hour.
That’s the thing about photographing adult families. Everyone in the frame is in the middle of their own chapter, and the group portrait is the only place those chapters sit side by side.
Three relationships in one room
This session was marking more than one thing.
Wendy’s parents were celebrating thirty years of marriage. Wendy and her husband had married at the courthouse and haven’t had a wedding — so these are, in a real sense, their first proper photographs as a married couple. Her brother’s girlfriend came too, at her parents’ suggestion. As Wendy put it: he’s probably going to marry her anyway.
Thirty years, three months, and not yet. All in the same hour.
That’s the thing about photographing adult families. Everyone in the frame is in the middle of their own chapter, and the group portrait is the only place those chapters sit side by side.
Bringing a pet into a studio
Most rental studios do not allow pets by default. It isn’t arbitrary — a rental studio is a white room with a paper or vinyl floor that the next four clients will also use, and not every animal is reliable about where it goes. One accident and the space is out of commission. So the policy is usually no, unless you ask.
Ask before you book, not after. Permission comes from the studio owner, and it needs to be explicit. Some say yes without conditions, some ask for a deposit, some want the animal crated between setups, some say no outright. Find out which before you pay for the hour — a studio you love that won’t take your cat is worth knowing about on day one rather than day of.
If you’re planning a family session around a pet, make it the first question you ask, ahead of light and price. It narrows the list faster than anything else.
What helps on the day:
- Bring a carrier and use it between setups. It keeps the animal calm and it reassures the studio.
- Someone whose only job is the pet. In a group this size that’s easy — there’s always a spare pair of hands, and it should be a named person rather than whoever happens to be free.
- Bring their own towel or mat for the floor.
- Photograph the pet frames early. Animals have a shorter attention span than the session does, and a cat that’s done is done.
- Treats, and something familiar-smelling.
- Clean up as though you were never there. It’s what makes the next photographer’s request easier to say yes to.
And accept that the pet decides how it goes. Some of the best frames here came from the cat doing something nobody planned. You can’t direct that, which is rather the point of including them.
What to know if you're planning one
Window light studios photograph best between 10am and 2pm. This surprises people who’ve been told golden hour is the answer. Golden hour is an outdoor rule. Indoors, you want the sun high enough to fill the room, which means midday — the opposite of what you’d book outside.
Don’t schedule the first day of your travel. Wendy ruled out day one because people would be arriving jet-lagged, and she was right. Tiredness shows in faces in a way no amount of direction fixes. Give everyone a night’s sleep first.
Book more time than you think. Studios rent by the hour with minimums, usually one hour. If you want an hour of photography, book two hours of studio — you need the room before and after. And with the warm-up factored in, an hour of shooting is about the minimum for six people and multiple groupings.
Decide what the wall photo is before you arrive. There’s usually one image the whole thing is really for. Know which it is, take it early while everyone is fresh and tidy, and treat everything after as a bonus.
Ask for both setups. Wendy wanted casual frames by a window and formal frames against a plain backdrop, and there’s no reason to choose. Most studios with good natural light have both within a few steps.
Studio or outdoors — how we'd actually decide
Not a better-or-worse question. A different-situations question.
Outdoors if you’re local, you have a place that means something, and you can move the date if the weather turns.
Studio if people are flying in, the window is narrow, nobody agrees on a location, or the group is large enough that walking between spots eats the session.
In-home if there’s a baby. We’ve written about that separately for milestone sessions with an infant, familiar surroundings beat both.
Planning family photos while everyone’s in town?
Tell us your dates and how many of you there are — We can advise honestly whether a studio or somewhere outdoors makes more sense.
