By ANDREA WHELAN – a London Family Photographer

Family dressed in blue and white sitting under tree in Pembroke Lodge on sunny day

There are some birthdays that need more than a card. Eighty is one of them.

This shoot was for a family who’d come together to mark Dad’s 80th, three generations, three couples, four grandchildren, and the one person at the centre of it all who had quietly made the whole thing possible by living a long and well-loved life. They chose Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park, which is one of those London locations that does an enormous amount of work for you before you’ve even taken a photo. The terraced lawns, the long view out across the Thames Valley, the trees that have been standing there longer than any of us, the John Beer Laburnum Walk arching its quiet yellow over a path. It’s a place that already feels like an occasion, which is exactly what an 80th birthday needs.

It was a hot day. Properly hot, the kind of London summer afternoon where you have to think about shade as much as composition. I’m always glad when families pick somewhere like Pembroke Lodge for a session like this, because the gardens give you everywhere to go, out into the open for the wide views and the formal group, then back under the trees for everything else. The dappled light under a chestnut canopy in late June is one of the best things you can photograph people in. Soft, generous, no one squinting, the kind of light that makes everyone look like a slightly better version of themselves.

Extended Family Photographer

Pembroke Lodge

Richmond

Extended Family Photography

We started with the view. Dad and his eldest grandson and one of his daughters, standing at the edge looking out over miles of green, hand in hand behind their backs in that quiet way grandparents and small children sometimes do without thinking. Then the rest of the family arriving into the frame, eight people on a path looking out at a city, which is the kind of image you can’t really plan for and don’t want to. It just happens because you’ve put the right people in the right place.

The big group portrait under the John Beer Laburnum Walk was the formal moment of the day. Three couples, the grandparents in the middle, the children gathered in front. The arch frames everyone naturally, you don’t have to do much, you just have to get them there before the children get bored. We did it quickly, got the shot, and moved on.

Summer Photo Shoot in Richmond

Then under the trees, which is where the session really opened up. Each of the daughters with their own little family on a fallen log. The grandparents with each grandchild in turn. A four-generation grouping with the women of the family, both daughters, the matriarch, and the little girl in the striped dress on her grandmother’s lap, who is going to look back at this picture in fifty years and feel something she can’t quite name. A father lying in the long grass with his two youngest, telling them something. The whole family piled onto the log together for one final group, everyone touching someone, no one quite looking at the camera in the same direction, which is always how the best big group shots go.

And then, at the end, just Dad. Black and white, sat against the leaves, looking straight down the lens. Eighty years of a face, which is the whole reason any of them were there in the first place.

Why Pembroke Lodge works for extended family photography

Pembroke Lodge gardens sit at the highest point in Richmond Park, with views out across the Thames Valley toward Windsor on a clear day. For an extended family shoot — particularly one with grandparents and young children — there are a few things that make it genuinely brilliant.

You’ve got variety in a small area. The formal terraced lawns and the King Henry’s Mound view give you the open, cinematic backdrops. The John Beer Laburnum Walk gives you the formal arch shot. The trees around the edges of the gardens give you shade, dappled light, fallen logs to sit on, and a much more intimate feel for the smaller groupings. You don’t have to walk far between any of them, which matters when you’ve got an eighty-year-old in one direction and a one-year-old in the other.

Three generations together for Grandad’s

80th Birthday

Name: Andrea Whelan Photography
Price range: $$$

Notes on the Location

It’s free to enter, the gates open at dawn for vehicles and earlier for pedestrians, and there’s a café on site if you need to bribe anyone afterwards. Parking is at the Pembroke Lodge car park itself, and pushchairs are absolutely fine on the main paths.

For an extended family session I’d usually suggest meeting around 90 minutes before sunset in summer, or late morning in the cooler months. The light at Pembroke Lodge in the golden hour is genuinely beautiful, but on a hot day like this one, working in the shade earlier in the evening can be just as lovely and a lot more comfortable for everyone.

Booking an extended family photographer in Richmond Park

If you’re planning a milestone — a significant birthday, an anniversary, a family who don’t all live in the same country and are finally in the same place at the same time — an extended family shoot is one of those things you’ll be glad you did and sad if you didn’t. The grandparents won’t always be there. The children won’t always be small. Sometimes the whole reason to do it is so that one day, you’ll be able to sit down with the photographs and remember exactly who everyone was, on a hot afternoon in Richmond Park, when Dad turned eighty.

I’m an editorial family photographer based in Greenwich, working across London including Richmond Park, Pembroke Lodge, Greenwich Park, Blackheath, Chelsea, Kensington and central London. I specialise in extended family sessions, milestone birthdays, and family gatherings where the point is the people as much as the pictures. If you’d like to talk about a session, get in touch here.