What to Expect from an At-Home Family Photo Session in London
Andrea Whelan is a London family photographer based in Greenwich, South East London. She photographs families, newborns, maternity, and visiting families across London and beyond.
A relaxed, unposed family photo session at home in London, usually an hour and a half to two hours. I follow your family’s lead and photograph what’s actually happening rather than asking anyone to perform for the camera.
You’ve been thinking about booking a family photographer for a while now. Maybe years, if you’re honest. Other people’s family photos that you keep going back to on Instagram. And a quiet voice that says you should really get round to doing this before the kids change again.
And then the same thoughts. The children will be feral. Your husband hates having his photo taken. You don’t know what to wear. And what if you spend all that money and end up with the same stiff posed photos you already have from the studio shoot you did when the baby was tiny.
I get it. Most of the families I photograph have been thinking about it for ages before they finally send the email. So this is for you, the one with the half-written enquiry sitting in your drafts. Here’s what actually happens at a family photo session, what it feels like, and why it almost certainly won’t be the thing you’re worried about.
Before we even meet
Once you’ve booked, we’ll talk through what you want from the session. This is where I find out about your family. Who’s shy. Who’s the wild one. What you actually do together on a Saturday morning. Whether there’s a particular corner of your home where you spend most of your time.
I’ll ask about your home itself. Not because it needs to be tidy or stylish. It really doesn’t. It’s because every house has its rhythms. The kitchen island where everyone ends up. The bed everyone piles onto on Sunday mornings. These are the places I want to photograph you in, because they’re the places that actually mean something.
And we’ll talk about timing. Light is the most important thing I work with, and the best light in your home is usually a specific window at that time of the day. If you’ve got a baby who naps reliably, we work around that. If you’ve got a four-year-old who is a different person before and after lunch, we work around that too.
The first ten minutes
Here is the thing nobody tells you about family photography: the first ten minutes are almost always a bit awkward. Your children, who have been told for days that a photographer is coming, will either freeze or perform. Your husband will look at the camera like it’s accusing him of something. You will be hyper-aware of where to put your hands.
This is completely normal. It’s also why I never start with the camera in anyone’s face.
I’ll arrive, take my shoes off, accept a cup of tea, and spend the first stretch of the session just talking. To you, to the kids, to the dog. I’ll ask your eldest to show me their bedroom, or the toy they’re most proud of right now. I’ll probably ask the baby’s name about fifty times in a silly voice until she laughs at me. By the time I lift the camera, the children have mostly forgotten that I’m there to take pictures.
This is the part that surprises most first-time clients. They expect a photographer who arrives and starts directing. What I actually do is much closer to the opposite. I want to follow your family’s lead and quietly document what’s already happening, with a few gentle nudges when they help.
The yes-day philosophy
I have a phrase I use a lot when I’m preparing families: think of it as a yes-day.
If your three-year-old wants to climb on the bed in his welly boots, the answer is yes. If your toddler wants to show me, very seriously, every single one of her toy cars, the answer is yes. Your eldest wants to hide under a blanket fort for the first twenty minutes, the answer is yes. I’ll photograph that blanket fort.
This isn’t because I don’t care about getting good photos. It’s because I care about getting real photos. And real photos come from children who feel like themselves. The minute you start correcting them, sit up properly, stop fidgeting, smile for the lady, they tip from relaxed into self-conscious, and you can see it instantly. The eyes change. Their shoulders go up. The photos start looking like the ones you didn’t want.
Letting them lead means the session has more energy and honesty. You end up with photos where your children look exactly like the people you live with, not strangers in nice clothes.
How to prepare the kids (without over-preparing them)
The single biggest mistake parents make before a session is talking it up too much. The photographer is coming! You need to be a good boy! We’re going to take really nice photos!
By the time I arrive, the four-year-old has spent three days believing this is a Significant Event, and is either terrified or determined to perform like he’s auditioning for a school play. Both are hard to come back from.
A better approach, in roughly the order of helpfulness:
A day or two before, mention casually that a friend called Andrea is coming over to take some photos of the family, and that they don’t have to do anything special, just play how they normally play. That’s it.
Don’t promise treats for good behaviour during the session. It loads the whole thing with pressure. If you want to plan ice cream afterwards because it’s a treat day, lovely, but frame it as a treat for the day, not a reward for cooperating.
Skip the practice smiles. The smiles you’ll love in the final photos aren’t smile-for-the-camera smiles. They’re the ones that happen when their dad whispers something funny in their ear, or when their little sister does something ridiculous.
Don’t overdress them. New shoes that pinch, scratchy collars, anything they have to be careful with — all of it makes children stiff. Comfort first, always.
Feed them. A hungry child is not a photogenic child. Snack bag on standby!
The truth is your children don’t really need to be prepared. You might. The session goes better when parents arrive having let go of the idea of perfect children sitting in a row, and accepted that the magic is going to be in the in-between bits.
What we photograph during a family photo session in London
A typical session at home moves through a few different rhythms, though we never follow a rigid plan.
There’s usually a calm opening stretch, often on the bed or the sofa, where the family is together and the children are still finding their feet with me. These quieter frames tend to produce some of the most beautiful photos, small interactions, a hand smoothing hair, the way your baby looks up at you when she hears your voice.
Then there’s a more active stretch, often involving climbing, running, hiding, jumping on furniture, and at least one negotiation about something. This is where I get the photos that show what your family actually feels like. The energy, the affection, the small bits of chaos that you’ll forget about in five years if nobody photographs them.
I’ll also try to get some portraits, because most parents do want at least a few proper photos where everyone is looking at the camera and smiling. We do these once everyone is warmed up and the children trust me, not at the start. Done at the right moment, they take five minutes and feel easy. Done at the start, they take forty minutes and feel like work.
If your home has a garden, or if there’s a park nearby, we usually move outside for the last stretch of the session. The change of scene resets everyone, the kids get a second wind, the parents relax because the kids are running off energy, and the light outside is often beautiful in a different way to the light inside.
What about the one who hates being photographed
I don’t ask reluctant partners (it’s not always Dad!) to pose for the camera. I photograph them with their children, doing something, holding the baby by a window, lifting the children onto a shoulder, watching them from across the room. Almost all the best photographs I’ve ever taken were ones where they weren’t thinking about the camera at all, because they were looking at the child.
Tell them this in advance, if it helps: they don’t need to perform. They just need to be there. The session is much easier on everyone when the camera-shy parent knows they aren’t going to be asked to stand against a wall and look natural.
How long it lasts and how it ends
Most sessions run between an hour and a half and two hours. Long enough to settle in, get through the energetic middle, capture the quieter moments, and finish before the smallest person in the room hits the wall. Short enough that it never feels like work.
Towards the end you’ll often notice that nobody is paying any attention to me anymore, which is exactly when the best photos happen. The children are doing whatever they want, you’ve let go of trying to manage them, and your family is just being itself in your own home. Those are the frames you’ll come back to in ten years and feel something about.
After the session, you’ll have a few weeks to wait while I edit. I’ll then share the gallery with you and walk you through choosing how you want to keep the images, whether that’s an album, prints for the wall, or a digital collection. We can talk about all of that when the time comes; you don’t need to decide anything before the session.
A note on Greenwich, Blackheath, and South East London
Most of my sessions are in the families’ own homes, across Greenwich, Blackheath, Brockley, Dulwich, Forest Hill, Lewisham, and out across South East London. I’ve also photographed families in Streatham, Clapham, Battersea, and across central London, Chelsea, Kensington, Marylebone, over the years.
I mention this only because some families worry their home is too small, too messy, or too ordinary to photograph well. Having photographed sessions in tiny terraced flats and in five-bedroom houses, I genuinely cannot tell you which produced the better photos. It is never the home that makes the session work. It is the family in it.
If you’ve read this far
You’re probably ready to book, or close to it. The fact that you’ve spent ten minutes reading about what to expect tells me you care about this, which is the only thing that actually matters. Families who care end up with photos they love.
If you’d like to talk about a session – at home, in a London park, or somewhere quieter that means something to you – get in touch and we can find a date that works. There’s no rush, and there’s no pressure. Just an idea of how the next few months might unfold for your family, and whether you’d like me to be the one to photograph it.
Snacks!
The way to reminder that smell in years to come
This magic!
AS SEEN IN
