Birthday party photography, wedding anniversary celebrations, and Christmas photos all have one thing in common: they are all about celebrating big milestones with the people we love the most. These tips will help you create a photo story for your clients they’ll treasure.
Document what’s important: keys to event photography
This prompt is a fundamental one which will help you in a lot of different settings. It’s all about getting to know your clients, so you can accurately document the event or milestone they’ve hired you to record.
Get Photojournalistic is a prompt that compliments this one well: find out what’s important, then go incognito to capture it.
How to use this photo pose prompt
To take photos that show who a family is, it’s important to get to know who you are working with. What’s important to them as a family? Why have they asked you to photograph them, now, at this time?
Spend some time at the beginning of a session (or on a discovery call before the event) digging into what’s important about this moment to them. Then balance your time across the session or event, making sure you capture what they’ve identified as important.
What might be important at different events or sessions:
- Birthdays: Documenting the gathering of friends, photos of the immediate family with birthday person, relatives who have traveled a long way to visit, the decorations, games, activities, food, gifts, cake. Don’t forget to use Look at the Camera! to capture those important multi-generational family portraits, and my prompts for photographing toddlers over at Photofocus will help for small birthday people.
- Christmas: Gathering of family, Christmas outfits, magic of the season (snow or summer fun, etc), decorations (tree, lights, etc), food, gifts.
- Maternity: Celebrating body changes, excitement of waiting, celebrating couplehood, announcing pregnancy or gender. Maternity Basics will help you capture these.
- Newborn: Celebrating and welcoming new baby, documenting newborn phase, parenthood, growing family, making house a home, a long fertility journey, furbabies to real babies.
- Anniversary: Gathering of family and friends, multi-generational family groups, remembering the start of the relationship, celebrating achievements, celebrating two families becoming one, joy of lifelong love. Don’t forget that Old-Fashioned Romance is beautiful for a couple at any age!
- General family sessions: Getting updated photos, kids together and as individuals, parents as a couple and as individuals, celebrating a milestone (graduation, university acceptance, sports win, anniversary, etc), celebrating grandparents, a family reunion or special visit from relatives who live a long way away.
Whatever you are there to document, learn what’s important to the family about this point in time, in terms of relationships, and in terms of how the event is being celebrated. Seeking the details is a core skill in wedding photography. The bride and groom have spent time to create a specific experience for their guests (the decorations, mementos, food and drink, etc), and the decisions they made say something about the value they place on their relationships to each other and to their friends and family, and the value that they place on the celebration itself. For example, a lavish, 400-guest wedding says something different about the bride and groom who have chosen this, compared to the couple who chooses an intimate elopement with 10 members of their immediate family only.
The same is true for other family events. The choices made to celebrate Grandpa’s 90th birthday, or Mom and Dad’s 30th wedding anniversary, reflect who the family is and what they value. As the professional they’ve chosen to document this event for them, you have a responsibility to reflect those values in your photography.
When you’ve got what’s important sorted, remember to consider your location and what light you will be working with so that you’re prepared for whatever eventuates. To prepare yourself for indoor photography with a speedlight, I can’t recommend Speedlights 101 with Mark Wallace enough—I did this class in 2018 after struggling with hit-and-miss flash for years. I was so unsure about using flash that I avoided it altogether. This class was a game changer for me, especially when I started booking more full-day weddings. A single on-camera speedlight (I use my Canon Speedlite 580EX II) is an essential, easy-to-use addition for event photography. Read Get Flashy for the full low-down on how to use flash in your photography.
Idea 1: Find what’s important
- Uncover the relationships, moments, and memories important to this event. If they’re not sure how to answer, ask in different ways (as below).
- What’s important about this moment in time?
- What are you most excited about for the party / event?
- Why photograph your family, right now?
- What are the non-negotiables that we must document?
- What would you be disappointed about me missing, if I didn’t photograph it?
Idea 2: Seek the details
- What details have the family chosen to emphasize in their celebration?
- What do they value about this event? Document the experiences (speeches, music, dancing, rituals, games, activities), decorations, mementos, food and drink, venue, that they have chosen.
- Contextualize the details by capturing the family using, interacting with, enjoying them.
Creative extension
- For a big, important event (major birthday, big anniversary, graduation, etc) an individual session with the person or people who the event is about makes a useful addition to your package offering. Planned far enough in advance of the event, the photos can be included as part of the decoration or mementos for the event itself.
- If you are able and you think it’s appropriate, ask everyone attending the session (e.g. the guests or the family) to bring something (photo, object, etc) that represents to them what’s important about this moment, or about the family member being celebrated. Have them share their stories at the session and capture the reactions.
What do you love about event photography? Tag me @promptographerguide and use the hashtag #promptographerguide to share with the tribe.
Want this prompt in your Field Cards set?
All the info in this prompt post is summarized onto a single card in the Promptographer Guide Field Cards, with the details given in the accompanying Guidebook. All the ideas are given on the one card so you have a rich, comprehensive tool for sparking ideas. I’ve designed it this way so you only need five to ten cards to build a whole photoshoot.
If you want this prompt in your set, make sure you include Set 6: Family Essentials in your Field Cards.
