Most Family Photography Is Aimed at Babies. This Session Wasn't.
Most of what shows up when you search for a family photographer is babies. Toddlers in overalls. Newborns swaddled in something cream-colored. And that makes sense — those years pull hard at people.
But somewhere around age eight or nine, something quiet happens. The sessions stop. Not on purpose. Parents just get busy, kids get self-conscious about cameras, and everyone assumes there will be time later. Later becomes high school. High school becomes someone leaving for college.
This is what I thought about during a recent session in Northbrook with a mother, dad and their two kids — ages 11 and 14 — and their dog, Teddy.
I'll be honest about something: this mom is one of my closest friends. I've watched her kids grow up in real time, not just through a lens. But I want to be clear that isn't really what this post is about. It's about what happened when I photographed them, because it's the same thing that happens with almost every family this age, once you actually let them be themselves in front of a camera.
A 11-year-old and a 14-year-old do not want to be told how to stand. They will tell you, without saying a word, exactly how much patience they have left, and it is usually less than you'd hope. So we didn't fight that. We walked. We let Teddy do what dogs do, which is mostly ignore direction entirely and end up in the middle of every good photo anyway. The 14-year-old, who is at the age where affection with a parent can feel complicated in public, let her guard down in small ways I don't think she noticed — a hand on her mom's shoulder, a laugh she tried to hold in and couldn't.
The 11-year-old was easier in some ways, still young enough to want to be near his mom without thinking twice about it, but you could see the beginning of the same shift. A little more distance. A little more "I've got this."
That's the thing about photographing kids at this age. You're not documenting cuteness anymore. You're documenting a relationship that's actively changing shape — a mother figuring out how to be needed in a new way, and two kids who are still, underneath the eye-rolls and the noise-canceling headphones, deeply hers.
Parents constantly tell me their teenager "hates having their picture taken." Almost every time, what actually happens is the teenager hates being posed. Give them something to do — walk somewhere, throw a ball for the dog, talk to their sibling instead of the camera — and the resistance mostly disappears. The goal was never a cooperative smile. It was catching what's true when nobody is performing for anyone.
By the end of the afternoon, Teddy was thoroughly unbothered by the entire process, the light in Northbrook had gone that particular gold it does in early evening, and what we had wasn't a "nice family photo." It was proof that this family, at this exact stage — loud, a little prickly, completely devoted to each other — existed and was worth remembering.
If your kids have outgrown the baby-and-toddler window and you've assumed that means the window for family photos closed too, it didn't. It just changed what the photos need to look like.
Ready to document this season of your family — dogs, teenagers, and all?
Reach out here and let's talk about what a session in Northbrook or the North Shore could look like for you.
Want to learn more about a calm, baby-led newborn session in the comfort of your own home? Explore my in-home newborn photography experience
