Articles · August 1, 2026
6 Tips for Large Family Photos
Planning a large family photo session in Atlanta? These 6 tips help you keep kids happy, outfits coordinated, and portraits stress-free.
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Tips for Large Family Photos
If your family is spread out around the country, getting together for a birthday, graduation, or holiday is a great time to do photos with the entire group. But I hear often that it is stressful for families trying to wrangle lots of kids (and adults!) to get together for a portrait. Here are some suggestions to make it go a little smoother.
- Plan your family session for a time when kids are usually in their best mood. With lots of kids and different routines, this can be a challenge!
- Let everyone have fun and be themselves. Don’t worry about being too fussy with posing. We want to capture the kids’ personalities, so letting them be themselves, whether it’s silly or serious, will give you photos that bring back memories of what they were like during this time of their life.
- Play up the session as fun, and a reward in itself. But it never hurts to have bribes ready (and that goes for the adults too!)
- Coordinate clothes, but you don’t have to match exactly. It’s nice to choose one neutral color, like grey/beige/white/black, and a family of accent colors.
- Relax and go with the flow! With a large family and small children, you can expect that someone will have a meltdown. But don’t worry about it! We will move on to other people for a while to give that kid a break.
- Make it a party! Since you have the family together, plan to end the session with a meal or snacks or even a little picnic. It’s a great way to create memories around the shoot so that when you see the images in the future, you’ll have fond memories of this time together.