Why Posed Photography Is Out For Families and Lifestyle Photography Is In

In our image-saturated world, it’s never been more popular to have professional photographs taken of you and your family.

The style of those images may be ultimately up to you, but there’s something you should know about posed family photos: they’re not your only option.

There’s a new trend that’s sweeping the world of professional family photography: lifestyle photos. Lifestyle photography embodies a style that is more in-line with the way we think about family and childhood in the 21st century. It’s natural, carefree, and strong to its mission to capture candid moments for the future.

Posed Photography

I think we’ve all sat for a posed family photo at some point in our childhood. I remember the yearly pilgrimage that my family and I would take to the supermarket to be sandwiched in for a five-minute shoot between other families. My three brothers and I would wait in line, complain and be in terrible moods, only made worse by the last minute wet comb that my mother insisted improved our wild hair.

In the photographs, we look stiff, stark and downright uncomfortable, with smiles plastered on our faces in an almost robotic consistency. Looking back on those photos, there’s nothing in them that shows our cheekiness, how we loved to laugh, chase each other and wrestle. It doesn’t show our personalities at all, just four small people who look related standing in a group, staring blindly at the flashing light. When I compare it to our family albums, full of candid shots and moments, we appear as different people. Sure the photos are sometimes blurry, and rarely correctly framed, but they’re of us as we were then. Living, screaming, running, laughing and getting the very last drop out of childhood.

Lifestyle Photography

If you take everything you know about posed photography and turn it on its head, you end up with modern lifestyle photography. It takes all the candid magic of your own family albums to the expertise of a professional photographer. There’s no matching outfits, no studio lighting, no boring paper backdrops, no rush, and definitely no discomfort of wrestling your toddler into seated position and then forcing them, on pain of no dessert, to smile for just one picture.

Next Page: What Makes Lifestyle Photography Different