In-Home Family Photography Shoot in Asheville, NC.
I just had the best family photo shoot ever, in the neighborhood of Oakley, right outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Of course, I am a high-energy extravert who is obsessed with family photography, specifically unposed, in-home documentary family photography, and I always come home from a session having decided that was the best session I’d ever done with the best family who has ever existed on the most perfect day that ever was. Essentially, I come home from these things high as a kite.
Having said all that, these are some of the best family pictures I have ever made! Now, what the internet tells me to do is to open up AI and have it generate a blog post for me about photography in general and families and it would make these little lists with em dashes and be good for SEO and terrible for everything else, including our water supply and our brains. So instead….I’m going to tell you myself what you need to know about why this photo session went so well.
As always, it was the people. It’s not the light that can make or break an Asheville photo session, it’s the people. This family was warm, kind, laid back (although their house was absolutely sparkling.) I had met them previously, during an in-home maternity session about eight months earlier. I had the pleasure of shooting with full sun pouring through the many windows in their home which felt to me like shooting in a studio. There were PILES of light. Puddles of it. I was a kid in a candy store.
Documentary Family Photography captures real, authentic moments between people who love one another.
The ages of these kiddos could not have been more ideal for an in-home documentary style family photo shoot. The baby was all smiles and the three year old brother was nonstop action. People tend to think that they have to fill up their photo shoot time with lots of activities, but that’s a misconception. When you have a toddler involved, you don’t have to plan anything at all. Just let that kid lose and follow it all over the place. The moments script themselves and I’m just there to document it.
Spring is a particularly lovely time to have your family photos done, particularly in Asheville if I may be so bold. After months of dull colors and overcast skies, finally the grass is popping green again, the sky was blue, the trees were blooming and there was that delicious feeling of being let free again after a long winter. Everyone felt buoyant and new, like they’d just taken themselves out of the drier and were all warm and tingly. Weather and season has a huge effect on people’s moods and the general atmosphere of a shoot. I love shooting in every season, but spring has a particular pop to it. Especially in a city like Asheville with cherry trees just going off everywhere you look.
At the very end of my 90 minute photo session, the magic got cranked up when the parents decided to tackle the laundry. I cannot tell you how much I love making photos of domestic labor- I think it is some of the most nuanced, interesting, textured material (literally and figuratively) and it gets totally overlooked by most photographers. It’s hard to picture the many hours (lifetimes?) of laundry, dishes and tidying up adding up to something beautiful and intriguing, even haunting, but that is exactly what documentary family photographers do. We see something ubiquitous yet ignored by mainstream family photographers, and we turn it into art.
Finally, I was proud of myself for making images vaguely in the style of Gregory Crewdson, one of my very favorite photographers. He explores the darker side of home life, particularly life in small and economically disadvantaged towns, shooting with fog machines and meticulous and expansive lighting set ups, always at twilight. His work is savage and quiet and haunting. Here are two of the images I made that felt Crewdson-esqu to me:
As much as I love a full Day in the Life photo session, which can be anywhere from ten to sixteen hours, it really is remarkable how many images and moods can be made during The Classic Family Session, which is only 90 minutes long! Please reach out by clicking the button below if you have any questions about my family photography services, or just to say hi!