If you have ever perused the websites of the various professional photographers that are advertising their services, you may see these wonderful full family portraits, where everyone is dressed in matching colors, and standing at a river bank, or seated at various positions on bales of hay, or seated comfortably in someone’s swanky parlor.  Seeing those, you might think that getting your own family together for a portrait of that quality is completely out of the question.  However, while those examples on the photographer’s website probably represent his or her finest work, it doesn’t mean that your own family photo project can’t have some degree of success.  It all begins with good planning.  Here are a few tips that might improve your chances of getting a large portrait for the front hallway.

a) Commit to the project.  Depending on the size of your family, and whether any of them have to travel in order to be together, scheduling a family portrait could present some inconveniences for some members.  Unfortunately, the only advice here is to deal with the details, and get it done.  Even if your plans are to use a holiday, when the whole family is already together, there may be some logistical issues to work around.  Take as little time as possible from the family fun, but commit to getting at least a few good shots, regardless of whether you are using a professional photographer or the self-timer on your own digital camera.

b) Try to schedule the photography for a time of the day when all of the babies and the toddlers have already eaten, and perhaps have already had a good nap.  Children, by and large, are often the greatest uncertainty when they are included in taking pictures of a group, and having them rested and well-fed can improve the chances of good behavior during the session.  And keep in mind, regardless of how satisfied they may be at the beginning of a photo shoot, they will get tired of the whole thing rather quickly.  Therefore, it becomes important to try to shoot the entire group first, and get a good version of that image stored for processing.

c) Another thing to remember about photographing with small children is that the photographer will be watching for pleasant expressions or smiles on their faces, and will time his or her shot with that as a queue. Therefore, all of the adults in the shot should be sure they are ready, looking at the camera and smiling, since the flash could go off anytime the photographer sees the children in a happy condition.

d) Matching clothes for a portrait are nice, but not important enough to worry about too much.  Still, be advised that solid colors always tend to look better than clothing that is patterned. 

e) And then finally, have fun.  If the work of getting that big picture on the wall causes stress or arguments, then every time you look at the picture, you will have negative thoughts instead of pleasant ones. It might actually better to have a few imperfections in the finished work, and laugh about it later on, than to be featured on the photographer’s website, and wish you hadn’t ever organized the event in the first place.