What to ask before you book anyone
You are about to hand a stranger your children for an hour. These are the questions that actually tell you something.
1. How many family combinations will you shoot?
This is the whole job and it is the question almost nobody asks. "The whole family" is one photograph. What about each parent with each child? The children together? Each child on their own?
Ask for the list. A photographer who does not have one is going to improvise, and improvising is how you end up with eleven versions of the same frame.
2. How long is the session, really?
Fifteen minutes is not a session, it is a queue. Twenty minutes cannot cover a family of five properly. Forty-five minutes is enough to do it without rushing anyone, which is why mine is 45.
3. What does the whole thing cost?
Not the session fee — the thing. The number you will actually pay to walk away with photographs. If they will not say before you book, that is the answer.
4. When do I get the photographs?
Ask for a number in days. "Soon" means a month.
5. What happens if my child is ill?
The answer should be immediate and it should not involve a fee. Children get ill. A photographer who penalises you for that has not done this much.
6. Do I get the digital files, and can I print them?
Full resolution, with a print release. If you have to come back to them for prints, you do not own the photographs.
7. Will you use my child's photograph on your website?
Ask explicitly, and get the answer in writing. It should be no unless you say yes.
8. How many of these have you done?
Experience shows up as speed and as a plan. Someone who has photographed over 5,000 families knows what to do when a three-year-old refuses to cooperate, because they have watched it happen hundreds of times.
The short version
Session 45 minutes. Twelve poses included, eighteen or twenty-four if you want them. The session is $99, bundles run $199 to $799, and you choose everything before we shoot so nothing is sold to you afterwards. I have photographed families for seven years — five at Portrait Innovations, two at Picture People.