Planning an extended family session: ten people, one photograph

Taking a photograph of fourteen people is not difficult. Getting fourteen people to the same patch of grass at the same time, dressed compatibly, before the light goes, is the entire job. Plan the logistics and the photography looks after itself.

Why these sessions are different

A session with one family of four is flexible. If someone is late or grumpy, we adapt. With twelve or more that flexibility disappears: every minute of delay is multiplied by everyone standing around, and goodwill in a large group drains fast.

These sessions also tend to carry weight. They happen because grandparents are visiting, because someone is ill, because everyone is in the same city for the first time in five years. Often it is the only photograph of that particular set of people that will ever exist.

The good news: the actual photography is straightforward if the ground is right and the light is even. Nearly all the risk is organizational, and therefore preventable.

Appoint a general

One family member, decided in advance, whose job is people. Not me — I do not know who Aunt Carol is, I cannot tell which children belong to which parents, and calling out names I have to ask for each time is how you lose twenty minutes.

The general knows everybody, is not shy about raising their voice, and can produce the right six people for the next combination while I am still finishing the last one. Choose someone organized and slightly bossy. Every family knows who this is.

What they do: send the details out beforehand, take the questions, get people out of cars and into the right place, and call the next grouping when I ask. With a good general a fourteen-person session runs like clockwork. Without one it takes twice as long and everyone gets cold.

The arrival problem

Most large-group sessions lose their time here rather than during the photography.

Give one arrival time, and make it fifteen minutes before the real start. Someone will be late. Build it in rather than hoping.

Send a map pin, not a park name. “Fairmount Park” covers thousands of acres and there is no version of this that ends well. Send the exact parking area, with a photograph of it if you can.

Name the parking situation explicitly, including whether it is free, whether it fills up, and where the overflow is. Six cars arriving at a small lot on a Saturday is a real problem — see the parking notes in the Fairmount Park guide.

Nominate one phone number for people who get lost. Mine is not it; the general’s is.

Tell people what the ground is like. Grass, slope, distance from the car. Someone will otherwise arrive in shoes that cannot cross a field.

Warn everyone how long it will take. People who expect twenty minutes get restless at forty. People who expect ninety are relaxed throughout.

The shot list, and the order

Write it down beforehand. Send it to me. This is the single most useful thing you can do.

A large group photograph takes three to four minutes once you count arranging people, checking eyes and taking enough frames. Twelve combinations is therefore around forty-five minutes of solid work. Without a list we will forget one, and the one we forget is always the one that mattered.

The order I work in, and the reasoning:

1. Everybody, immediately. First thing, before anyone drifts off, gets muddy or takes a coat off. This is the photograph the session exists for and it happens while the group is still assembled and tidy.

2. Grandparents with all the grandchildren. Second, while the children are still cooperative. This is usually the second most wanted frame.

3. Each nuclear family separately. Then release each one as they finish, so people can sit down and children can run.

4. The adult siblings. Then the grandparents alone. Often the only decent photograph of the two of them in years.

5. Couples, and any specific requests.

6. Candids at the end, once the formal list is done and everyone has relaxed. This is where the photographs people are surprised to love come from, and it only works after the pressure is off.

Children first wherever possible, then let them go. A four-year-old who has been released to play is not a problem. A four-year-old held in reserve for another thirty minutes is.

Coordinating across households

Socially the hardest part, because you are asking four separate households to align without anyone feeling managed.

Send one short message with three or four colors. Not a mood board, not a shopping list. Something like: cream, navy, olive and denim, wear whatever combination you like. People can nearly always find those in a wardrobe they already own.

Do not ask anyone to buy anything. It creates resentment and it produces stiff people in unfamiliar clothes. Somebody in the group will also quietly not be able to afford it.

Set the formality level once. “Nice but not smart” is a clear enough instruction and prevents the one-person-in-a-suit problem.

Accept that one person will ignore all of this. They always do, and it does not matter. A single outlier in a group of fourteen is invisible.

Avoid pure white and pure black in a big group, since a mix of both at the extremes is the hardest thing to expose evenly across that many people. Mid-tones photograph best en masse.

The underlying rules are in the what to wear guide; for a large group, simply loosen them and prioritise everyone feeling comfortable.

What a big group needs from a location

The criteria change completely from a session with four people. In priority order:

• Flat, even, clean ground with room to back up. Heels sink into soft grass and slopes make arranging rows unnecessarily hard.
• Parking close by, with capacity for several cars.
• Even light across a wide area. A big group cannot all stand in one small patch of good light. Open shade or a large uniformly lit area is essential, which is why dappled tree shade is a poor choice for groups.
• Somewhere to sit. Benches, walls, steps. Older relatives will need to sit at some point in ninety minutes, and a low wall doubles as a way to build height into an arrangement.
• A bathroom, if there are children or older adults in the group.

What works well around Philadelphia: Awbury Arboretum for open meadow with free parking, Valley Forge for the most room of anywhere in the region, Morris Arboretum when amenities matter most, and the open lawns of Fairmount Park.

What does not: tight city squares, narrow streets, trails, and anywhere with a long walk from the car. Rittenhouse Square is excellent for two people and wrong for fourteen.

Bring a chair if anyone cannot stand for long. A folding camp chair in a car trunk has saved more of these sessions than any camera equipment. It gives an older relative somewhere to be between groupings, and a seated grandparent with everyone gathered around beats a line of standing people anyway.

Blinking, rows and depth

Two technical realities, so nothing is a surprise.

Somebody blinks in every frame. With fourteen people that is close to a certainty, which is why I take far more frames of the big group than seems necessary. If one is perfect except for a single pair of shut eyes, that is fixable from a neighboring frame.

Two shallow rows beat one long line. A long straight line puts the people at the ends further from the camera than those in the middle, which distorts them and can push them out of focus. Arranging a group into a slightly curved, staggered shape keeps everyone the same distance from the lens and looks less like a team photograph.

Practically that means the group will be arranged more tightly than feels natural. People instinctively leave gaps. I will close them up, ask you to turn slightly inward, and put the tall ones on the outside rather than all at the back.

An extended family session runs two hours, which is the right length for this: about forty-five minutes of structured groupings, a break, and then the unstructured part where everyone forgets the camera. Send me the list beforehand and I will build the order around your light and your location.