When Everyone Is Grumpy

San Diego family photographer

You want family photos that you didn’t have to take yourself and photos that were taken by a camera that isn’t also a phone. You want someone else to do it for you, BUT you are afraid it will be a bad day and a waste of money.

Your kids have been going through it lately. Your partner might not exactly be thrilled about family photos to begin with. You may have spent the hour before I arrive trying to get everyone dressed while wondering why you voluntarily paid money for this experience. And there’s no telling what someone will be upset about next. Today it’s the wrong color cup, tomorrow it’s the granola bar broken in half (why is it always the granola bar??) or their brother looking at them in a way they found personally offensive.

Hi. I see you.

Those grumpy kids (and adults) don’t scare me one bit. I have a few of my own and I grew up in a house with approximately 47 younger siblings. More importantly, I don’t need your kids to be happy for two straight hours to make some damn good photographs of your family.

One of the reasons I love documentary family photography is because I don’t have to stop every time someone has a feeling. Your kids can warm up slowly. They can need you and only you. They can wander off for a snack. And they can get mad because they didn’t want their apple cut like that. I work with the actual people who show up instead of trying to turn everyone into a nicer, more cooperative version of themselves.

That said, I have spent more than a decade photographing families, so I do have a few tricks.

We plan ahead.

Before I even show up, we’ll talk about your family and what makes your days work. Naps matter. Food matters. If your toddler turns into a tiny Victorian ghost at 6:15 p.m., I’m probably not going to suggest we begin your session at 6. We’ll also talk about the things your family actually likes doing together so we have somewhere natural to begin. I’m not showing up with a Pinterest shot list and asking everyone to perform Family Fun™ on command.

We zig, when we planned on zagging.

While I can’t do the splits anymore, I pride myself on my flexibility in most other areas of life. Maybe we planned to make pancakes and nobody wants pancakes. Or maybe your kid is suddenly deeply committed to digging a hole in the backyard or the baby needs to be held for the next forty minutes. It’s all fine by me. Some of my favorite photographs happen because something completely different happened than what we expected. Something that would have looked absolutely bonkers on paper.

We throw some food at it.

I love snacks. It’s embarrassing how much I love snacks, but because I feel so strongly about them, I will always recommend them. Sometimes everyone just needs to eat something and unlike a traditional photo session you do not need to hide the food from me. Someone chewing a cracker isn’t ruining anything. Sometimes snacks themselves end up being most of the story (like they end up being most of my basket at Trader Joe’s).

We comfort and carry on.

Not gonna lie, I love when I can photograph emotions other than joy. I love a grumpy face and I love a sad face. But even more than that, I love what happens around those feelings.

I love the way your kid reaches for you without thinking, the way you already know which kind of comfort they need, the way they fold themselves into your body even though they are getting much too big to fit there.

Those pictures matter to me because when I photograph your family, I’m not only looking for evidence that everybody had fun, I’m looking for evidence of how you know each other, the dynamics within your relationships. I get to see how you take care of each other and how it looks to be loved in your house and then I get to show you what it looks like from the outside.

We don’t try to fix every mood.

Sometimes the baby doesn’t stop crying. Sometimes one kid is just having A Day. Sometimes you had a crappy night of sleep and you’re the grumpy one. Does it suck? Absolutely. Does it bother me? Not one single bit. Really.

Does that mean I want everyone miserable for the entire session in the name of authenticity? Absolutely not. We’re still going to play and talk and probably find ways to reset when somebody needs it. But I also don’t need you watching your kids the whole time thinking, ‘Oh my god, please be good. We are paying for this.’

Your family does not have to perform happiness for me. What makes family photographs feel like your family isn’t everybody smiling at the same time anyway, it’s the connections underneath all of it. It’s who gets climbed on, who knows where the good snacks are hidden, and who can make the baby laugh.

So if you’ve been putting off family photos because you’re worried your kids won’t cooperate, your partner will be grumpy, or everyone will collectively lose their minds five minutes before I arrive, you do not need to wait for a magically easier version of your family. This one is worth remembering too.

This is also why I love photographing families more than once a year. If somebody is grumpy this time, fine. That’s part of what life looked like right now. I’ll come back next season and they’ll probably be in a completely different mood, obsessed with something new, missing a tooth, or doing some other weird thing you couldn’t have predicted. No one session has to do all the work.

Your family doesn’t need to be any more interesting, cooperative or put together than it is right now.

You can read more about my San Diego family sessions here. If this sounds like your kind of family photos, I’d love to help you make it happen. LET’S DO THIS →