Not being a family portrait photographer, I am in a perfect position to give advice to those who are. Not withstanding that your income may well support your sensitivities by answering the question, “Should I?” with regard to a pose idea,  I must go on record as answering, “No!”

*** draft*** I’ll finish when I can get back to this. Sleep calls***

 

The Old Truck

 

I have nothing against old pickup trucks if they function. Sometimes they do make an interesting prop. But lining your subjects up against a decrepit machine that clearly can’t drive them anywhere is a bad idea.

 

To do this with a boulder is okay, we expect that to just sit there. But a truck is a tool, and associating your subject with something spent and disfunctional just sends a bad message.

 

Same applies with hay bales. These are good when there is a connection between field straw and the subjects. Tuxedo and prom dress with hay is foolish. Western theme with hay: yes.

 

Randomness

 

It seems popular to stick people in an untamed but previously managed environment such as a field which has niether been recently cultivated nore mowed and is rife with weeds. I think there is a belief that decay and neglect makes interesting backdrops. 

Stick a couple knee deep in thistles and cockleburrs then ask them to kiss. For interesting variety, have the man hold up a fence gate. There is no fence, mind you. Just the gate. This signifies that to the man, there is a way out of the relationship. To the woman it signifies that the dolt is trapped because he only sees the closed gate and will never figure out that the rest is missing. This could be the genesis of doubt so be careful.

 

Do keep props on hand such as the moldy suitcase. Use when you do the abandoned rail road photo set. Sit them on the suitcase and snap pictures. Then have them plant butt cheeks on the rusty rail with the suitcase nearby. Finally, put the thing by the track and have them walk away then toward you as you snap treasured images. This represents the eternal bid for the freedom that abandoned tracks provide.

 

Some clients will want the girl laying across from one rail to another, comfortably resting. It’s so darned original!

 

Of course you will want your subjects to discover each other against the backdrop of an uncared for barn. Rot adds mystery.

 

The best photos are endearing when they feature subjects doing what they never would do except under the direction of a photographer. For example, place a somewhat portly woman in an uncomfortably tight dress supine on a log. Have her man sit beside her and look fondly in the distance as if wondering how he can get there rather than here. He could hold an umbrella over them despite the lack of rain or sun.

 

It’s always good to have a loving couple who fought about shower door stains on the way to the shoot act out a kiss.

 

Kissing for family and couple photos is risky because if the act is merely a pose, it looks as right as measuring armpit stubble. Which I hope never to witness.

By this I mean that acting out affection is far different in appearance from acting on affection. Fake kisses look as appealing as a family reunion photo of Zeeke and Edna with their mouths full of Venison that just won’t chew to the point where it can be swallowed even after half an hour.

 

The really clever photographers capture the little children doing something cute as their parents look on lovingly completely out of focus.

 

Photographers dress the man in jeans and the woman in whatever looks good in a cloudburst. Then they take a picture with her wet form laying next to him, her head in his lap. Later in the shoot, the two stand next to each other happy as can be and you can seriously sense the joy of the guy, who now looks like he wet his pants.  This accentuates his joy and serves the double purpose of advertising that, “We do long sessions!”

 

Awkward

 

When the face of a subject in the family photo shoot has the expression of, “you want me to do what? WHAT? ok. But I don’t like it” you know you’ve dialed in a classic. To be as bad as the other photographers, at least one subject in the set must look like what ever you have them doing never really happened and never ever really will.

 

Photographers do not document fathers teaching their daughters how to set a rat trap, or how to empty one that’s been used. But based on the faces, they might as well have.

 

Real photographers must surely realize it isn’t enough to have everyone looking like they are setting rat traps while eating limburger cheese, so they probably hint at it.

 

No studio would be worth their chops without the “nice clothes and costumes in a muddy stream, dirty field, or rotting pickup” poses.

 

We all know the wedding dress will be used only twice: once on the big day, and for a subsequent anniversary. So it’s no crime to subject it to elements it was never designed to survive. Nothing is as interesting as a tuxedo in beach sand or.

 

To be successful, everyone is an Anne Geddes clone. Strip the newborne down and pack her into a casserole dish with wings taped to her shoulders. Cradle her in your gigantic  dirty hand, smudged to emphasize your rough manliness juxtaposed against her new totally softness.