I don’t photograph too many families but when I do I always savor the opportunity. Family sessions always fly by, they’re chaotic, loud, and challenging. But that’s why I love them. While it’s great to get some beautiful posed portraits with everyone smiling nicely at a camera, the candid shots and the photographs that show off the personalities of each person are my favorites – and why I love working with families so much.
While I’ve been shooting with film at my weddings and family sessions since 2010, somewhere along the way I shifted from shooting a bunch of film at family sessions to shooting almost entirely digital. I blame part of the switch on the fact that I wanted to be able to confidently capture fast moving moments – like small kiddos running around the yard with the cutest smiles on their faces. I don’t know where I lost that confidence, but I need to take it back! Part of me also didn’t want to get too trigger happy and spend my entire bank account on processing too many rolls of film. That $$ adds up awful fast.
But a couple months ago I asked my friends who might be interested in a portrait session with their horse. I have the biggest soft spot for horses and I love photographing the relationships between humans and their equine companions. My friend Alycia volunteered for my horse photography project but the longer we talked, the more we decided that a full family session would be a good idea. Alycia shoots with film, too, so when I suggested that I shoot our entire session exclusively with film cameras she was right on board. It has been a couple years since I’ve photographed a session entirely on film and to say that this day was a refreshing experience for me is an understatement. These kiddos were wound up, running all over the place, and thinking about doing other things besides holding still for portraits, but I’m still so proud of what we created together. Since Alycia’s family has a small family farm complete with a horse, cow and goats we incorporated all of the animals into their shoot. In my book, the more animals, the merrier 🙂 They are part of the family, after all! I can’t wait until my next family portrait opportunity – and I’m excited to shoot more sessions exclusively on film soon.
Film scans by my favorite people over at The FIND Lab!
Thank you, Loftus Family – and to Sol the Icelandic Horse and Rosie the cow!
