Family photography
Family photography outdoors: portraits of families and children. A three-generation family shoot in a park on a summer's day. The series begins with bubbles…
A three-generation family shoot in a park on a summer's day. The series begins with bubbles and the youngest and works through every combination: parents with the baby on the grass, grandmother and grandson under a palm, the grandparents together by the fountain, the group on a bench, and at the end all seven under a tree.
A family shoot does not work through poses but through time — children need a while before the camera becomes uninteresting. Which is why the order is not accidental either. The small groups first, while the child is fresh and still willing; the big frame with all seven comes last, because it is the only one that needs seven people looking the same way at the same moment. By then the camera is part of the afternoon rather than something to react to.
The light runs against the instinct. Everyone wants to be in the sun, because sun looks like summer — in the picture it makes hard shadows under eyes and noses, and with seven people it never falls on all of them equally. So the group frame is placed under the tree in even shade, with the bright park behind. The foliage across the top of the frame is deliberately kept: it is the green border that turns a bench in the shade into a summer's day.
The white bench solves the real problem of a group photograph, which is where to put the heads. A fixed seat gives you two levels — seated and standing — and in two levels seven people can be staggered so that no face disappears behind a shoulder, and the height difference between grandfather and grandson becomes a line instead of a staircase.
And the bubbles are not a motif, they are a job. A two-year-old with something to do looks different in a picture from one who has been asked to keep still — and so do the adults around him.
- Genre
- Familie
