There’s something so special about getting all the family together for a multi-generational photo session. I absolutely love detail shots, and this week’s prompt combines those two things!
Family trees: showing generations of parents and grandparents in family photography
Capturing details to illustrate heritage and what’s come before is a beautiful way to honor and remember deep family connections. Look for the similarities between family members, and highlight them.
How to use this photo pose prompt
This prompt can be worked into any kind of session: lifestyle, in-home, studio, formal, relaxed, documentary. For the creative extension ideas, you’ll need to prepare a few things in advance (or have the family prepare), but the rest are easily added into any session. Just give the directions and shoot!
Idea 1: Faces
- Line up two faces side-by-side, with eyes aligned. Get back with a long lens and crop tight so each face is bisected. This takes some careful alignment to get right! Ask them to have a gentle smile (think Mona Lisa smile, it can look a bit strange with a big grin) and hold very still.
- Capture the same angle cropped tight around a feature (e.g. eye as viewed in profile), for each member of the family, and compose as a collage.
Idea 2: Hands
- Stack hands on top of each other, e.g. grandmother, mother, daughter. Fan out fingers or have them interlace fingers.
- Contrast chubby baby hands with parent/grandparent hands, by having baby/toddler grab a finger. Utilize the newborn grab reflex or ask a toddler to hold on. Capture the back of the hands in the shot to emphasize wrinkles/smoothness.
- Hold hands together to show wedding rings and engagement rings: e.g. grandmother and grandfather, mother and father, etc. Consider other heirloom jewelry: e.g. toddler holding grandfather’s watch.
- Have everyone in the family place hands one after the other on something significant like a special tree, beam of the house, etc. Shoot up the tree cropping at the wrists.
Idea 3: Feet
- Have child sit on parent’s lap and shoot from above to capture the legs and feet.
- Shoot looking down with child standing between parent’s feet.
- Shoot from ground level and crop around the feet, again with child between legs.
- Line up in order of age, e.g. grandfather, father, son. Try just all the kids, just all the adults, etc.
- Try barefoot and with shoes on.
Creative extension
- Create a photo in a photo in a photo: you need a large picture frame for this (e.g. 24in x 12in). Put a blank piece of white paper in the frame. Photograph a child holding the frame on her own. Then her mother holding the frame (again on her own). Then her grandmother holding the frame. Photoshop the three together as a composite: into the child’s frame goes the photo of the mother, into mother’s frame goes the grandmother, and into the grandmother’s frame goes a photograph (e.g. scanned) of the child’s great-grandmother. Four generations in one photo! You could do this even for families who are spread all over the country—just have them all pose with a different frame, and composite the photos they send in to you.
- For an in home session, photograph precious photographs that they have around the home: old family photo albums, portraits of great-grandparents, etc. Bonus points for having someone interact with the memorabilia (hold it on their lap and shoot down, hold up a photo in front of them and shoot with a large aperture to blue everything but the photo, etc).
Tag me @promptographerguide and use the hashtag #promptographerguide to share your favorite prompts for showing family trees.
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 10: Whole Family Moments in your Field Cards.
