Our Big Family 2023 | Anderson, California

It’s that time of year again! A time for families to gather together for a season of joy and thankfulness. And what better time than to get family photos done! While the bookings were flooding in, we made sure to set aside a date/time to do our own family session. Just like we did last year, we gathered our families together for portraits and again it was such a success! 

Little Bear Creek Ranch

Matt and I had the honor of shooting a wedding and a branding session at Little Bear Creek Ranch in Anderson, California. We met the owners and they were so gracious to offer the ranch to us for family sessions! So of course, in planning our own family session, I instantly knew I wanted to do it at the ranch. It’s so beautiful and peaceful there, especially at golden hour! The location we chose on the ranch was the lawn right behind the great big reception barn. It overlooks the wide open fields and huge majestic oak trees which created such a breathtaking backdrop.

Photographing your own family session

For my photographer friends, you may be wondering how on earth I managed such a large extended family session on my own with myself included in the photos! Here’s how I did it. First, I made a checklist of all the different groupings and individual shots we needed to take and I put them in order of how we would do them. (I just used the notes app on my iPhone). I did this several days in advance to the shoot. Then, I packed my trusty tripod. Which I only needed for the big group shots! Once, we were all there on location, I handed my phone to my daughter and had her run down each shot on the list. (Just like you would on a wedding day for family formals.) 

For the big group shot, I set my camera up on the tripod and put the 10 second timer on. I also had it do a series of 5 shots after the timer went off. This helped limit the number of times I had to break away and run back to the camera. Haha! We did about 3 sets of these and that was it! Then later, when it was our turn for individual family shots, I just handed my camera off to a family member and showed them what I needed them to do. With the new mirrorless camera AF system, this was super easy! And that’s it! Super easy and so much fun!

Coordinating our outfits

Lastly, coordinating our outfits was super fun. I made a color palette in canva and texted that out to our whole family along with a style inspo as well. We had fun texting photos back and forth of which dress and what shirts the guys should wear, etc. It’s definitely not an easy task to coordinate outfits for a large extended family session, but having a style and color theme in place helps so much! I absolutely love how our outfits coordinated together this year. Enjoy scrolling through my favorites from our very own fall family session!!!

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