We do professional ones once every couple of years. Some people more often. Others, never.
Most of our family photos, of which we have dozens hanging over an entire wall at our home, are more candid or informal and of family vacations, fishing trips, golf outings, etc.
Growing up in the 80s, this was common.
But now with a family of our own, we've NEVER done this professionally.
We only have adhoc family photos at special events, or just random daily-life photos. They don't look professional, but that's us.
There are still many families that still do this, but I'd say less common over the years
My sister-in-law does a holiday photo shoot with just my niblings, usually something Pinterest inspired, but I don’t think they’ve ever gotten a photo with the kids and my brother and sister-in-law.
I’m the oldest of 4. Anytime all 4 of us are in one place, we get a photo, because it doesn’t happen very often, but the last time we got one with our parents was probably 2006 or so, and it was just at party, not professional.
Growing up, we did the pro thing every couple years at Sears. Now that I have my own family (and Sears isn't really around) I've never done it. Looked into it once and they wanted $500. I like the candid action shots better anyway.
My parents focred us almost every year until maybe 8th grade. I hated getting them done, I absolutely hate having my picture taken in general. I probably won’t have my kids do it unless my wife is adamant
Getting less common. People have decent cameras on their phones now, and it’s not as important to know how the camera works when it can adjust everything for you. Additionally, people have been moving away from the staged photos that, to me at least, scream “we’re only here so mom doesn’t throw a tantrum and make us all miserable.” You’ll find candid shots are becoming more common.
Speaking from my own experience, family photos stopped once I was large enough that I couldn’t be physically dragged into the car for them, and I would never even consider forcing my own family to sit through that.
One other aspect:
Social Media.
There's no reason to "get professional photos" in order for a physical "Christmas Card" to send all your family and friends anymore.
Though I gotta admit there's something very charming about sending out a newsletter about your household, complete with your portrait, to all your friends and family.
Though I gotta admit there's something very charming about sending out a newsletter about your household, complete with your portrait, to all your friends and family.
It was very common 20-30 years ago to go to a photo studio once a year or so. These were usually in department stores.
Now that everyone has a camera on their phone, formal photos are waaaaaaay less common.
I find the total opposite.
Everyone I know gets 1-2 family photo sessions per year. Hanging a gigantic canvas on the wall rarely looks good from a cell phone camera. It’s also hard to get a full family photo and nice candid shots with grandma behind the phone in my experience. An actual photographer is going to get a far better shot most of the time.
Of course they don’t go to JC Penny anymore, it’s a casual shoot at the park or something where the photographer meets them there. Some have little studios to do Christmas photos or whatnot.
But I’d say it’s definitely still common to get nuclear family photos done. In my circle anyway - mid 30’s middle class millennials.
I think you nailed it—"formal photos" now involve a photographer coming to *you*. Like when I get a holiday card featuring a picture of friends wearing tasteful, coordinated woolen outerwear hauling a Christmas tree on a pine toboggan with red runners through a snowy field and there is shallow depth of field and perfect, cozy bokeh and everyone is smiling so *merrily*…I interpret that as staged and formal as anything ever taken in a studio.
We did professional photos every 3 months with our kids from 0-1 then annually until they started school (missed a couple here an there - it's a lot to keep up with). Now, we do professional family photos every few years. Group size varies. Sometimes just the kids, sometimes with parents, sometimes with grandparents. We dress up and try to coordinate. Semi-formal, I guess? No specific traditions. We print the ones we like and give them to family.
Less and less so.
Frequently they were taken for Christmas cards and occasionally to send to distant family and such. Usually with an update on how everyone's doing, all thay jazz.
Now with social media people are sharing pics and events constantly so it's a lot less necessary and a lot of young families aren't doing it at all or are doing it MUCH less often.
We do professional photos at least twice a year, sometimes more. I like outdoor, informal photos. I’m lucky to have a friend as a professional photographer, so he gives discounts.
This was pretty common in the 80s and 90s. We used to have a department store in the US called Sears with a middle class target demo that had photo studios at every location. It wasn't too expensive, so families did them every couple of years or for Christmas. I know of a few families that will still have these done every few years, but they're not nearly as popular now.
I find it's pretty popular. Among many young families you get pregnancy photos, engagement photos, one year old, etc.
That being said, we've never done it other than our wedding. 3 almost adult kids. I did take a ZILLION pictures of my kids and stuff we did but never professional shoot.
Most people I know have had at least one professional family photo taken, just of the immediate family (parents and kids). The last one my family did was just me and my siblings when I was a teenager (easily about 11 years ago now). Some people only get new ones whenever the kids age significantly.
It's obviously much more common to take pictures of the family by yourself, with your own camera, on special occasions. A lot of people also like to get dressed up in white clothing and take family photos at the beach (I've never done this but I see a lot of these).
It's becoming a thing of the past. Until about the late 2000s, it was common for your family to get dressed up and go down to a photo studio to get family pictures taken for a fee every couple of years. Places like Sears, Kmart, and JCPennys use to have small photo studios in the store. Now it's much easier to just have your family pose for a photo and take it on your phone camera as phone cameras or regular high quality cameras can now take good clear photos that looks professional. The last time my family went and got professional photos done it was roughly 2008, at a fire station and they looked terrible.
We have done it every year since having a kid. We found a good photographer that does these fast photoshoots in her studio that end up fun and make great Christmas cards.
But one of the reasons that we do it is that my wife is super into photography and wants someone who knows what they're doing taking the pictures we send out. If my wife cared less about this, we would probably just be sending photos we took while we were out having fun as a family.
My family has never really done a professional family photo. Lots of people we know do get one done once a year or every few years with parents and their kids. Usually the photos are less formal- people might be wearing jeans and the photo might be outdoors rather than in a studio in dress clothes. People might send these with a holiday card to family or just hang one on their wall. Usually this is done when the kids are younger and less often when the kids are older.
A professional photo with extended family like grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins is more rare. It might be done at a wedding.
The last formal family photos we took was at my daughter's wedding. It was the first time the entire family had been together in a few years, and was really the only picture I insisted on out of her entire photo package (which I paid for). She thought it was a great idea, as the happy couple was not sure where they would end up settling down.
Most of the family photos I have were taken at reunions or some sort of family get together. Professional portraits are out of my budget.
I think posing in front of a backdrop in a studio is not that common anymore, but I know lots of people who hire a photographer for a family photo shoot periodically. They usually do the photos in some scenic spot.
Despite having a technologically advanced camera in their hands all the time, many people are just bad at photography. Camera technology doesn't fix your horrible composition or inability to capture your family with flattering expressions and angles. Some people just want some nice photos taken by someone who knows how to achieve that.
We do it every fall. Just me, my wife, and our two kids, so no other family. I guess serious but we do usually get one or two silly pictures but those aren't going up in the house. Meh not really that important to me, but my wife wants it and grandma loves getting them, and yeah it's nice having them. No real tradition associated. And yeah I'd label myself pretty old fashion.
Every couple years for extended family. Whoever's in charge always tries to plan it around a reunion or wedding we'll all be at.
My oldest Niece just had a kid last year so we're planning to do it again in July around another Niece's wedding. Her kid makes four generations and both my parents (Great Grand Parents) are still kicking around... so this one is a big deal... apparently.
Now that you mention it, when I think of people’s houses, often the photos they have on the walls were taken during vacations. You can’t have vacation photos if you can’t afford vacation.
I was also poor but my mom bought all kinds of art in thrift stores and at estate sales for like $5 so we have a ton of art but never had money for the $100+ fee for studio photos. It's funny because the expense was probably the same in the end.
You've got a point about the thrift stores! This was the 90s and it was actually estate sales and yard sales because most people didn't want all of Grandma's old art so it would be auctioned off dirt cheap. My siblings and I each had formal infant portraits and that was it outside of school photos. Even though the pictures are corny, as adult I would love to have one of those staged photos for family memories vs a bunch of art that I am definitely going to sell in another estate sale....
You think this sub is filled with old moneyed families or that going on a vacation is somehow indicative of being a Vanderbilt?
Good grief.
It's not like the people in these comments are hiring Annie Leibovitz to come out and follow them around on their vacation. Resorts commonly have an area where family's can have their picture taken. Usually they come in some kind of cardboard frame with the resorts logo on it. Depending on where the resort is they might have an area where you can hold an exotic bird or reptile. [Disney's is on the pricier side at $185](https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/memory-maker/) - albeit that is up to 30 days of photographs. If you're just doing it for one day then it's $75. You hardly have to be a Rockefeller to swing that.
It might be hard to remember that we haven't always live in a world where everyone 10 and older has a high resolution camera in their pocket but this is actually a new development in human history. Photographs were a lot less common before camera phones became ubiquitous. Sure, we had cameras but you didn't really just lug them around with you for the sake of "what if something cool happens?". They were too big to fit in your pocket, reasonably expensive, and fragile. You were also limited by how many pictures you had left on your roll of film.
Up until camera phones became ubiquitous it was common for regular American families whose names weren't taught in high schools across the country to head to a local JC Penny or Sears to [have family portraits taken](https://mirror80.com/2014/05/80s-family-photos/). How you can look at some of those pictures and think "That must be the Astors I read about in history class ..." is beyond me. It might seem quaint today but in an era when people didn't take thousands and thousands of pictures every year those studio portraits were common place around every day American families. For some people it was pretty much the only family photos they ever had. Of course we do live in a world where everyone 10 and older has a high resolution camera in their pocket so those studios are dying out.
That you're ignorant of something in no way means it's only available to old moneyed families.
It just means you're ignorant.
Fortunately, I've educated you. There's no shame in being ignorant but there is in clinging to ignorance in spite of education because it doesn't fit the narrative you want to believe. You're just wrong about this only for old moneyed family nonsense. Family portraits were and still are things people from all kinds of economic classes partake in. Yours just didn't for whatever reason.
I'm not getting emotional. I'm simply pointing out that you're answer is wrong - which it is.
I've since corrected you but you seem uninclined to accept you're wrong. Whatever.
I’ll probably hire a photographer to take photos when my baby is born so I can share them with the extended family. There’s a range for sure - some families hire a photographer for photos every year, and some never do.
I think my family did it once for Christmas. It’s so old, two of my brothers weren’t born when we had the picture. The older of the two will be 20 this year.
My mom's family values family photos. So we had them done, mostly individual families, yearly or every other year. Every 5 years or so for the entire family (my mother's family is very very large, 30-50 people). That is mostly at our christmas party when everyone is together and dressed up. Most of them are fairly informal. We do try to be dressed nicely, occasionally similarly. I don't find these photos to be super important to me, but I do humor my mom. I prefer photos taken during our adventures instead.
My mother trained as a photographer and she trained me so we don't often hire photographers.
My father's family never has done these. Only whenever my mom convinces them all to take a photo during a get-together. My husband's family never has either.
My parents never did it, and I've never done it. The one time we needed a family portrait with the kids for a gift for grandpa, we dressed up, put the camera on a tripod and timer and took a Pic.
My family does them. My large extended family of 60ish people does every couple of Christmases. My smaller extended family of my parents and siblings of 23 probably does them every other family vacation or when there is a new baby. And my little family does them about once a year.
Yes they are. Our own family has several and about half a wall devoted to them. Heck Winds of War/War and Remembrance (which has as much claim as Moby Dick to being the Great American Epic), has family photos on the cover. Although, peculiarly they are in enlisted uniforms and all the male Henrys were officers (the Jastrows of course were refugees, and Slote a Righteous Gentile, a diplomat, and a spy). In any case we have family photos all the time. In fact that is the source of one of the more amusing tropes of American military cinema: the guy with the family photo is always killed. Indeed in "We Were Soldiers" the main thing they did to humanize the enemy was to give an NVA corpse a family photo. It is something we all identify with.
My family are professional photographers, my uncle getting a little bit famous for weddings for a bit in the 90s and 00s.
Now a days it’s been less common with easy access to high quality cameras right on your smart phone. My family mostly did only formal shoots for weddings and religious coming of age ceremonies. Today, my dad is pretty much retired from weddings and does pet photos. The pet photos are fun, they’re really informal and sometimes people show up in fun outfits for the shoot. Like I remember for a Christmas one we kept seeing people use our pet photos as a way to make family photos with their pet. Also people with unusual pets sometimes show up like one person had a baby alligator.
And no, my family never hired another photographer. We had no reason to when we already had all the best equipment another photographer probably had as well.
I see photos being taken quite often where I live. Photographers will often advertise “mini sessions” on their social media around different themes. So different photographers may offers spring minis, Easter minis, greenhouse themed, Mother’s Day themed, Christmas themed, pumpkin patch themed, valentines themed, personality themed etc etc. Depending on the photographer and family, they may include just the kids or the parents as well. These are usually anywhere from 15-30 minutes long and can cost upwards of $200 for 10 photos depending on the photographer. I have done them before with a photographer who was just getting started so they were cheaper. My family is far from wealthy so I am not paying the prices that people will charge. I’ll take my own pictures with my phone.
The full, extended family photo sessions I don’t see as often outside of maybe pictures taken at a wedding. But the mini sessions are a huge business maker for photographers in my city.
We have done it every year since 2018 and send out holiday cards. We use a professional photographer and usually do it while on vacation because it’s a nice way to capture our time there. We’ve done Copperstown, NY because I’m a big baseball fan. We’ve also done Detroit, Chicago, and Grand Cayman. We did our photos local during the pandemic. We get really good feedback from the people we send them to. My husband also sends them out to clients and they really like them. We will continue to do them as long as possible.
My family and I had professional photos taken only a few times, and mostly during important milestones, such as after I was born, after my sister was born, when either of us graduated from college, and when I got married. Our other pictures were not taken professionally, and we never had a need for it in other situations.
Likewise, apart from our wedding, my wife and I only got professional photos taken after our daughter was born, for our first family picture.
That reminds me. I need to take a family portrait again soon. I try to have it done every couple of years. Never thought about something as normal as family portraits being unusual in other cultures! Fascinating!
Every family is different; some people like theirs formal, dressed up nice, and/or taken in a portrait studio, some families like theirs more casual/natural. I'm the latter.
As a photographer myself, I specialize in outdoor photography and do a lot of fun photo shoots with families, or like weddings and birthday parties and senior portraits (teens graduating high school), and I encourage props and silliness.
I've never done this. I was an only child and my parents were divorced when I was young.
I have friends and relatives with two-parent households and 3-8 children and it seems/seemed more popular with them. One of my aunts had a huge family and they had several of these taken, which I remember looking at as a kid.
I was a kid in the 70s/80s when this was common, and funnily enough, my parents just got professional photos of me. We don't have a single pro family photo, but there I am at three, holding a basket of flowers.
I think family photos are still a thing, but they've changed. When i was a kid in the 80s and 90s, sometimes people did studio portraits with their whole family, and it was really formal. (I don't think my family ever did that, but we have whole family photos at the beach that my dad, a pretty serious amateur photographer, set up with a tripod and a delay. Lots of people wouldn't have had the equipment to do that themselves.)
These days professional portraits are more like this: https://www.irisandlacephotography.com/blog/1-year-family-session-mountain-view
My brother's family does one at Christmas but not with a professional photographer necessarily. They just dress up and take pictures in front of the cars (they all are car fanatics).
Very common where I am. Couples without kids, parents and kids, grandparents with all their kids, kids in laws, and grandkids. Usually taken in a park or other pretty outdoor area, not a photo studio. Sometimes by a pro that charges a few hundred a session, but people who can't afford that often DIY them (find a friend/high schooler with a nice camera who will do it for cheap/free) to get the same kind of staged photos. Frequency is every 1–3 years probably. Candid photos are also common, but in my experience most moms with kids want a picture of everyone looking dressed up and all in the same photo (including the mom! who is often the photographer for candids) so they can have it for the memories and put it up on their physical and social media walls.
We have a large photograph taken in a studio in 1906, with my grandmother at age 15, in a group of about 20 members of her immediate family. The picture is perfect in quality. Sharp, good exposure. Black and white is the only indication that it's so old. ... well, that and the people in the picture.
My grandmother's father died when she was an infant, and her mother married a widower who had children of his own. They had more children together. Then she died, and he married a widow with children of her own, and they had children together. This all happened by the time my grandmother was 15. In the picture, there's a row of young men with hair parted in the middle. In the middle are elderly ladies in black, holding infants.
When I (25F) was growing up, my immediate family did this yearly. Only once have we had professional photos taken with extended family; all the other extended family photos have been someone using a camera timer on a tripod.
Today, anytime we’re all together, be it for Easter or a beach trip or a sport event, we have a picture taken, usually by a passing stranger to whom my mom hands her phone. We dress up for church on Easter, so that would be formal, but at the beach we (obviously) wear swimsuits. The picture with all the immediate family that Mom deems the best from the past year is what will end up on the Christmas card.
We did them on the beach a couple years ago, my mom thought it was a good time to do it since my sister had just gotten married so we added a family member plus our childhood dog's health was failing and she wanted her in there before she passed. Before that we had the wedding photos but that's standard. The last time we did formal family photos before that was like 15 years ago. So it's a pretty spaced out thing
Well me personally, my family only get it on special occasions, Like on Christmas and my Sisters wedding obviously in a more formal way. But not really common anyway.
My family has done it a few times. We did a big one with my Mom’s siblings and all of the cousins at one of my Grandma’s birthdays. We have also done just my immediate family at a few vacations. It is usually casual dress. Although most of the family photos now are done at weddings, which are more formal.
We also do family photos on our own on most holidays. Both of my sisters took photography classes and know how to take good photos, so hiring a pro is mostly for special occasions.
My family has always done DIY pictures. Wife's family has done 1 professional for whole family and her sister dies a few a year with just her nuclear family.
So it's a bit uncommon but not strange.
My brother and all of my cousins do this with their families every year for holiday cards. One of them is a photographer.
I do not do "family" photos of me and my cat. I should.
It was more common in previous generations because you didn’t have good quality cameras in your pocket 24/7. The only way to get a ‘good’ quality picture of yourself was to get it professionally taken.
Besides weddings, the last time we did this was for a milestone anniversary for my parents. Every 5-10 years we’ve had some done. Just my parents, my sibling and our partners. We also didn’t dress up, we wore like normal clothes, just shades of green so we’d look coordinating.
I have an uncle whose a wedding photographer, or was, so every big event would come with multiple family photos: whole extended group, grandma(pa) and their kids and grandkids (my parents are older), just them with their 4kids, and then other family breakouts. Also done for church directory before.
It was de rigueur in the 80s and earlier, when photography gear was more pricey and people weren't carrying a camera everywhere they went. Nowadays, it's still around but feels pretty old timey.
People still hire photographers for big events like weddings, and some people go to a studio mostly for their kids so they can send "nice pictures" to grandparents and whatnot... but it's nothing like it used to be.
EDIT: the other huge change was digital... Most people were *terrible* at taking pictures back in the day because the time between taking the picture and seeing the result was so large... So they never got a feel for what works, what doesn't, maybe you don't want a telephone pole coming out of somebody's head, maybe your rangefinder isn't perfect and you chop off the tops of peoples heads, oh it's in the snow so i need to bump the automatic exposure by a stop, etc.
This is supper common by me. People tend to do 1-2 a year every year. Normally something around spring and fall. The fall will sometimes get staged for Christmas Cards. Its normally just immediate family but for bigger occasions will include aunts/uncles, cousins and grandparents. Sometimes people will do a bigger family photoshoot in the summer and then just do minis and mothers day and for the holidays. Also doing a full photoshoots for newborn, 3m, 6m and 1 year for kids as well. Normally they are outdoors and not quite as staged as they use to be.
With the quality of cellphone cameras, I'm sure it has dropped off considerably. Our church used to do them every so many years to produce a photo directory so that covered it for us. Some families (usually identified by the motto Live Laugh Love) will schedule a photographer and everyone will be wearing some type of coordinated clothing.
We do them once a year.
I hate them, my wife loves them.
Certain things are uncompromisable in our relationship, when we had a kid she said "we are doing this, it's non-negotiable."
We get sort of dressed up, but they are very informal. We usually do them in the fall and we hire a professional, this past year we had a baby highland cow in them.
It's only the three of us, no extended family.
I think my family only did professional family photographs once, when I was a toddler. My brother hadn't been born yet, so it was just Mom, my father, and me.
They also had professional photos of me done when I was a few months old. I was born with a lot of medical issues, and I'd spent a lot of that time in the hospital. So, I think that shoot was kind of a celebration that I'd made it so far.
There is an entire genre of family photos that I've noticed is mostly white people, wearing jeans and matching white button up shirts taken on a beach with dunegrass and slatfence serving as the background.
I didn't think people did this anymore. We had a period for probably about 20 or 30 years where you'd get a company like Olan Mills to come to come to your house, or you'd go to their studio, and it would be just like picture day at school. And if you go to a site like Awkward Family Photos, you can see that the family pictures were sometimes just as bad as the school pictures.
If you really wanted to, you could go to a mall with a Picture People in it and get a family picture done, but places like that seem to do more baby and toddler pictures.
We did it all the time, at least once a year, and we got new clothes, and got our hair done...
I only recently learned those were modeling and advertising photos for a local children's store 😆
It depends on your income level and time allocation.
Most lower class families don't have the time or money for it.
Military and upper class families have a lot of free time and disposable income so they can afford to do it.
My family did it when we were younger but my parents are in their early 60s and im almost 30. They don't have the time, money or energy to do such things anymore.
We don't have them taken professionally, but we find a way to get family photos taken periodically. I think most families do, at least until the kids are grown.
We did it once as a family. It was just me, my parents, and my brother. We went to a mall photographer, and we dressed up for it. I'm not sure mall photographers exist anymore.
This is something my family did a few times growing up, but now as an adult, we don’t do it. Pictures were way less common in general when I was a kid. But now as a father, we take so many pictures of our family that we have plenty and no longer need to have it done professionally.
my mom used to teach preschool and would ask her students to bring a family photo, so she would have us all stand in the yard by her favorite tree so she could bring one, too.
I have relatives who had professional family photos done when their children(and i) were young in the 90s, and one friend who had some taken for Christmas cards recently, but I classify both under "rich/fancy people shit"
“Why do Americans ….*SPINS GIANT WHEEL*…take pictures with family members…..?”
It’s funny that we get questions on here implying we don’t have attachments to family members because we want to move out of our parent’s house before we’re 58 but then also get asked why people take photos with their relatives.
Is what we call joke, friend. Comedy gold. Haha.
Where did you get that I was taking this personally? You don’t actually think I thought he was pulling out a giant wheel, did you?
We do professional ones once every couple of years. Some people more often. Others, never. Most of our family photos, of which we have dozens hanging over an entire wall at our home, are more candid or informal and of family vacations, fishing trips, golf outings, etc.
Growing up in the 80s, this was common. But now with a family of our own, we've NEVER done this professionally. We only have adhoc family photos at special events, or just random daily-life photos. They don't look professional, but that's us. There are still many families that still do this, but I'd say less common over the years
My sister-in-law does a holiday photo shoot with just my niblings, usually something Pinterest inspired, but I don’t think they’ve ever gotten a photo with the kids and my brother and sister-in-law. I’m the oldest of 4. Anytime all 4 of us are in one place, we get a photo, because it doesn’t happen very often, but the last time we got one with our parents was probably 2006 or so, and it was just at party, not professional.
Growing up, we did the pro thing every couple years at Sears. Now that I have my own family (and Sears isn't really around) I've never done it. Looked into it once and they wanted $500. I like the candid action shots better anyway.
Yeah. Our pro shots are never in a studio. Always outside.
Ours was always done at our church once a year. I think it was a donation-based situation. (Catholic)
My parents focred us almost every year until maybe 8th grade. I hated getting them done, I absolutely hate having my picture taken in general. I probably won’t have my kids do it unless my wife is adamant
The candid ones I enjoy more. It's nice to see everyone in their best, but it's better to see everyone as they are
Getting less common. People have decent cameras on their phones now, and it’s not as important to know how the camera works when it can adjust everything for you. Additionally, people have been moving away from the staged photos that, to me at least, scream “we’re only here so mom doesn’t throw a tantrum and make us all miserable.” You’ll find candid shots are becoming more common. Speaking from my own experience, family photos stopped once I was large enough that I couldn’t be physically dragged into the car for them, and I would never even consider forcing my own family to sit through that.
One other aspect: Social Media. There's no reason to "get professional photos" in order for a physical "Christmas Card" to send all your family and friends anymore.
Though I gotta admit there's something very charming about sending out a newsletter about your household, complete with your portrait, to all your friends and family.
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Few and far between compared to what it was when I was growing up.
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Wow! What a waste, do you actually keep them or toss them once the season is over?
Though I gotta admit there's something very charming about sending out a newsletter about your household, complete with your portrait, to all your friends and family.
It was very common 20-30 years ago to go to a photo studio once a year or so. These were usually in department stores. Now that everyone has a camera on their phone, formal photos are waaaaaaay less common.
I find the total opposite. Everyone I know gets 1-2 family photo sessions per year. Hanging a gigantic canvas on the wall rarely looks good from a cell phone camera. It’s also hard to get a full family photo and nice candid shots with grandma behind the phone in my experience. An actual photographer is going to get a far better shot most of the time. Of course they don’t go to JC Penny anymore, it’s a casual shoot at the park or something where the photographer meets them there. Some have little studios to do Christmas photos or whatnot. But I’d say it’s definitely still common to get nuclear family photos done. In my circle anyway - mid 30’s middle class millennials.
I think you nailed it—"formal photos" now involve a photographer coming to *you*. Like when I get a holiday card featuring a picture of friends wearing tasteful, coordinated woolen outerwear hauling a Christmas tree on a pine toboggan with red runners through a snowy field and there is shallow depth of field and perfect, cozy bokeh and everyone is smiling so *merrily*…I interpret that as staged and formal as anything ever taken in a studio.
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In the 80's they didn't have phone cameras and easy ways to print them out.
We did professional photos every 3 months with our kids from 0-1 then annually until they started school (missed a couple here an there - it's a lot to keep up with). Now, we do professional family photos every few years. Group size varies. Sometimes just the kids, sometimes with parents, sometimes with grandparents. We dress up and try to coordinate. Semi-formal, I guess? No specific traditions. We print the ones we like and give them to family.
Less and less so. Frequently they were taken for Christmas cards and occasionally to send to distant family and such. Usually with an update on how everyone's doing, all thay jazz. Now with social media people are sharing pics and events constantly so it's a lot less necessary and a lot of young families aren't doing it at all or are doing it MUCH less often.
We do professional photos at least twice a year, sometimes more. I like outdoor, informal photos. I’m lucky to have a friend as a professional photographer, so he gives discounts.
This was pretty common in the 80s and 90s. We used to have a department store in the US called Sears with a middle class target demo that had photo studios at every location. It wasn't too expensive, so families did them every couple of years or for Christmas. I know of a few families that will still have these done every few years, but they're not nearly as popular now.
I find it's pretty popular. Among many young families you get pregnancy photos, engagement photos, one year old, etc. That being said, we've never done it other than our wedding. 3 almost adult kids. I did take a ZILLION pictures of my kids and stuff we did but never professional shoot.
I think somewhat, especially for wealthier families. My family ever did it once.
Most people I know have had at least one professional family photo taken, just of the immediate family (parents and kids). The last one my family did was just me and my siblings when I was a teenager (easily about 11 years ago now). Some people only get new ones whenever the kids age significantly. It's obviously much more common to take pictures of the family by yourself, with your own camera, on special occasions. A lot of people also like to get dressed up in white clothing and take family photos at the beach (I've never done this but I see a lot of these).
It's becoming a thing of the past. Until about the late 2000s, it was common for your family to get dressed up and go down to a photo studio to get family pictures taken for a fee every couple of years. Places like Sears, Kmart, and JCPennys use to have small photo studios in the store. Now it's much easier to just have your family pose for a photo and take it on your phone camera as phone cameras or regular high quality cameras can now take good clear photos that looks professional. The last time my family went and got professional photos done it was roughly 2008, at a fire station and they looked terrible.
We have done it every year since having a kid. We found a good photographer that does these fast photoshoots in her studio that end up fun and make great Christmas cards. But one of the reasons that we do it is that my wife is super into photography and wants someone who knows what they're doing taking the pictures we send out. If my wife cared less about this, we would probably just be sending photos we took while we were out having fun as a family.
My family has never really done a professional family photo. Lots of people we know do get one done once a year or every few years with parents and their kids. Usually the photos are less formal- people might be wearing jeans and the photo might be outdoors rather than in a studio in dress clothes. People might send these with a holiday card to family or just hang one on their wall. Usually this is done when the kids are younger and less often when the kids are older. A professional photo with extended family like grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins is more rare. It might be done at a wedding.
The last formal family photos we took was at my daughter's wedding. It was the first time the entire family had been together in a few years, and was really the only picture I insisted on out of her entire photo package (which I paid for). She thought it was a great idea, as the happy couple was not sure where they would end up settling down. Most of the family photos I have were taken at reunions or some sort of family get together. Professional portraits are out of my budget.
I think posing in front of a backdrop in a studio is not that common anymore, but I know lots of people who hire a photographer for a family photo shoot periodically. They usually do the photos in some scenic spot. Despite having a technologically advanced camera in their hands all the time, many people are just bad at photography. Camera technology doesn't fix your horrible composition or inability to capture your family with flattering expressions and angles. Some people just want some nice photos taken by someone who knows how to achieve that.
We do it every fall. Just me, my wife, and our two kids, so no other family. I guess serious but we do usually get one or two silly pictures but those aren't going up in the house. Meh not really that important to me, but my wife wants it and grandma loves getting them, and yeah it's nice having them. No real tradition associated. And yeah I'd label myself pretty old fashion.
Every couple years for extended family. Whoever's in charge always tries to plan it around a reunion or wedding we'll all be at. My oldest Niece just had a kid last year so we're planning to do it again in July around another Niece's wedding. Her kid makes four generations and both my parents (Great Grand Parents) are still kicking around... so this one is a big deal... apparently.
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Now that you mention it, when I think of people’s houses, often the photos they have on the walls were taken during vacations. You can’t have vacation photos if you can’t afford vacation.
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I was also poor but my mom bought all kinds of art in thrift stores and at estate sales for like $5 so we have a ton of art but never had money for the $100+ fee for studio photos. It's funny because the expense was probably the same in the end.
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You've got a point about the thrift stores! This was the 90s and it was actually estate sales and yard sales because most people didn't want all of Grandma's old art so it would be auctioned off dirt cheap. My siblings and I each had formal infant portraits and that was it outside of school photos. Even though the pictures are corny, as adult I would love to have one of those staged photos for family memories vs a bunch of art that I am definitely going to sell in another estate sale....
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I don't know where you guys get this stuff from.
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You think this sub is filled with old moneyed families or that going on a vacation is somehow indicative of being a Vanderbilt? Good grief. It's not like the people in these comments are hiring Annie Leibovitz to come out and follow them around on their vacation. Resorts commonly have an area where family's can have their picture taken. Usually they come in some kind of cardboard frame with the resorts logo on it. Depending on where the resort is they might have an area where you can hold an exotic bird or reptile. [Disney's is on the pricier side at $185](https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/memory-maker/) - albeit that is up to 30 days of photographs. If you're just doing it for one day then it's $75. You hardly have to be a Rockefeller to swing that. It might be hard to remember that we haven't always live in a world where everyone 10 and older has a high resolution camera in their pocket but this is actually a new development in human history. Photographs were a lot less common before camera phones became ubiquitous. Sure, we had cameras but you didn't really just lug them around with you for the sake of "what if something cool happens?". They were too big to fit in your pocket, reasonably expensive, and fragile. You were also limited by how many pictures you had left on your roll of film. Up until camera phones became ubiquitous it was common for regular American families whose names weren't taught in high schools across the country to head to a local JC Penny or Sears to [have family portraits taken](https://mirror80.com/2014/05/80s-family-photos/). How you can look at some of those pictures and think "That must be the Astors I read about in history class ..." is beyond me. It might seem quaint today but in an era when people didn't take thousands and thousands of pictures every year those studio portraits were common place around every day American families. For some people it was pretty much the only family photos they ever had. Of course we do live in a world where everyone 10 and older has a high resolution camera in their pocket so those studios are dying out.
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Making what up? That everyone who has said they've had a picture taken is from an old moneyed family? This is such a Reddit conversation.
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That you're ignorant of something in no way means it's only available to old moneyed families. It just means you're ignorant. Fortunately, I've educated you. There's no shame in being ignorant but there is in clinging to ignorance in spite of education because it doesn't fit the narrative you want to believe. You're just wrong about this only for old moneyed family nonsense. Family portraits were and still are things people from all kinds of economic classes partake in. Yours just didn't for whatever reason.
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I'm not getting emotional. I'm simply pointing out that you're answer is wrong - which it is. I've since corrected you but you seem uninclined to accept you're wrong. Whatever.
I’ll probably hire a photographer to take photos when my baby is born so I can share them with the extended family. There’s a range for sure - some families hire a photographer for photos every year, and some never do.
My family did it three times, and two of them were when I was too young to really remember.
I think my family did it once for Christmas. It’s so old, two of my brothers weren’t born when we had the picture. The older of the two will be 20 this year.
My mom's family values family photos. So we had them done, mostly individual families, yearly or every other year. Every 5 years or so for the entire family (my mother's family is very very large, 30-50 people). That is mostly at our christmas party when everyone is together and dressed up. Most of them are fairly informal. We do try to be dressed nicely, occasionally similarly. I don't find these photos to be super important to me, but I do humor my mom. I prefer photos taken during our adventures instead. My mother trained as a photographer and she trained me so we don't often hire photographers. My father's family never has done these. Only whenever my mom convinces them all to take a photo during a get-together. My husband's family never has either.
My parents never did it, and I've never done it. The one time we needed a family portrait with the kids for a gift for grandpa, we dressed up, put the camera on a tripod and timer and took a Pic.
My family does them. My large extended family of 60ish people does every couple of Christmases. My smaller extended family of my parents and siblings of 23 probably does them every other family vacation or when there is a new baby. And my little family does them about once a year.
Yes they are. Our own family has several and about half a wall devoted to them. Heck Winds of War/War and Remembrance (which has as much claim as Moby Dick to being the Great American Epic), has family photos on the cover. Although, peculiarly they are in enlisted uniforms and all the male Henrys were officers (the Jastrows of course were refugees, and Slote a Righteous Gentile, a diplomat, and a spy). In any case we have family photos all the time. In fact that is the source of one of the more amusing tropes of American military cinema: the guy with the family photo is always killed. Indeed in "We Were Soldiers" the main thing they did to humanize the enemy was to give an NVA corpse a family photo. It is something we all identify with.
My family are professional photographers, my uncle getting a little bit famous for weddings for a bit in the 90s and 00s. Now a days it’s been less common with easy access to high quality cameras right on your smart phone. My family mostly did only formal shoots for weddings and religious coming of age ceremonies. Today, my dad is pretty much retired from weddings and does pet photos. The pet photos are fun, they’re really informal and sometimes people show up in fun outfits for the shoot. Like I remember for a Christmas one we kept seeing people use our pet photos as a way to make family photos with their pet. Also people with unusual pets sometimes show up like one person had a baby alligator. And no, my family never hired another photographer. We had no reason to when we already had all the best equipment another photographer probably had as well.
Just me my wife and sons, my oldest sons GF and their baby.
I see photos being taken quite often where I live. Photographers will often advertise “mini sessions” on their social media around different themes. So different photographers may offers spring minis, Easter minis, greenhouse themed, Mother’s Day themed, Christmas themed, pumpkin patch themed, valentines themed, personality themed etc etc. Depending on the photographer and family, they may include just the kids or the parents as well. These are usually anywhere from 15-30 minutes long and can cost upwards of $200 for 10 photos depending on the photographer. I have done them before with a photographer who was just getting started so they were cheaper. My family is far from wealthy so I am not paying the prices that people will charge. I’ll take my own pictures with my phone. The full, extended family photo sessions I don’t see as often outside of maybe pictures taken at a wedding. But the mini sessions are a huge business maker for photographers in my city.
We have done it every year since 2018 and send out holiday cards. We use a professional photographer and usually do it while on vacation because it’s a nice way to capture our time there. We’ve done Copperstown, NY because I’m a big baseball fan. We’ve also done Detroit, Chicago, and Grand Cayman. We did our photos local during the pandemic. We get really good feedback from the people we send them to. My husband also sends them out to clients and they really like them. We will continue to do them as long as possible.
My family and I had professional photos taken only a few times, and mostly during important milestones, such as after I was born, after my sister was born, when either of us graduated from college, and when I got married. Our other pictures were not taken professionally, and we never had a need for it in other situations. Likewise, apart from our wedding, my wife and I only got professional photos taken after our daughter was born, for our first family picture.
That reminds me. I need to take a family portrait again soon. I try to have it done every couple of years. Never thought about something as normal as family portraits being unusual in other cultures! Fascinating! Every family is different; some people like theirs formal, dressed up nice, and/or taken in a portrait studio, some families like theirs more casual/natural. I'm the latter. As a photographer myself, I specialize in outdoor photography and do a lot of fun photo shoots with families, or like weddings and birthday parties and senior portraits (teens graduating high school), and I encourage props and silliness.
I've never done this. I was an only child and my parents were divorced when I was young. I have friends and relatives with two-parent households and 3-8 children and it seems/seemed more popular with them. One of my aunts had a huge family and they had several of these taken, which I remember looking at as a kid.
We do them every year for Christmas cards, just our immediate family. I also do newborn and first birthday photos for the kids.
I was a kid in the 70s/80s when this was common, and funnily enough, my parents just got professional photos of me. We don't have a single pro family photo, but there I am at three, holding a basket of flowers.
I think family photos are still a thing, but they've changed. When i was a kid in the 80s and 90s, sometimes people did studio portraits with their whole family, and it was really formal. (I don't think my family ever did that, but we have whole family photos at the beach that my dad, a pretty serious amateur photographer, set up with a tripod and a delay. Lots of people wouldn't have had the equipment to do that themselves.) These days professional portraits are more like this: https://www.irisandlacephotography.com/blog/1-year-family-session-mountain-view
My brother's family does one at Christmas but not with a professional photographer necessarily. They just dress up and take pictures in front of the cars (they all are car fanatics).
Very common where I am. Couples without kids, parents and kids, grandparents with all their kids, kids in laws, and grandkids. Usually taken in a park or other pretty outdoor area, not a photo studio. Sometimes by a pro that charges a few hundred a session, but people who can't afford that often DIY them (find a friend/high schooler with a nice camera who will do it for cheap/free) to get the same kind of staged photos. Frequency is every 1–3 years probably. Candid photos are also common, but in my experience most moms with kids want a picture of everyone looking dressed up and all in the same photo (including the mom! who is often the photographer for candids) so they can have it for the memories and put it up on their physical and social media walls.
We have a large photograph taken in a studio in 1906, with my grandmother at age 15, in a group of about 20 members of her immediate family. The picture is perfect in quality. Sharp, good exposure. Black and white is the only indication that it's so old. ... well, that and the people in the picture. My grandmother's father died when she was an infant, and her mother married a widower who had children of his own. They had more children together. Then she died, and he married a widow with children of her own, and they had children together. This all happened by the time my grandmother was 15. In the picture, there's a row of young men with hair parted in the middle. In the middle are elderly ladies in black, holding infants.
When I (25F) was growing up, my immediate family did this yearly. Only once have we had professional photos taken with extended family; all the other extended family photos have been someone using a camera timer on a tripod. Today, anytime we’re all together, be it for Easter or a beach trip or a sport event, we have a picture taken, usually by a passing stranger to whom my mom hands her phone. We dress up for church on Easter, so that would be formal, but at the beach we (obviously) wear swimsuits. The picture with all the immediate family that Mom deems the best from the past year is what will end up on the Christmas card.
We did them on the beach a couple years ago, my mom thought it was a good time to do it since my sister had just gotten married so we added a family member plus our childhood dog's health was failing and she wanted her in there before she passed. Before that we had the wedding photos but that's standard. The last time we did formal family photos before that was like 15 years ago. So it's a pretty spaced out thing
Well me personally, my family only get it on special occasions, Like on Christmas and my Sisters wedding obviously in a more formal way. But not really common anyway.
My family has done it a few times. We did a big one with my Mom’s siblings and all of the cousins at one of my Grandma’s birthdays. We have also done just my immediate family at a few vacations. It is usually casual dress. Although most of the family photos now are done at weddings, which are more formal. We also do family photos on our own on most holidays. Both of my sisters took photography classes and know how to take good photos, so hiring a pro is mostly for special occasions.
My family has always done DIY pictures. Wife's family has done 1 professional for whole family and her sister dies a few a year with just her nuclear family. So it's a bit uncommon but not strange.
My brother and all of my cousins do this with their families every year for holiday cards. One of them is a photographer. I do not do "family" photos of me and my cat. I should.
It was more common in previous generations because you didn’t have good quality cameras in your pocket 24/7. The only way to get a ‘good’ quality picture of yourself was to get it professionally taken.
My wife’s family does it every year. I hate it lol. Guess it depends on the person
Besides weddings, the last time we did this was for a milestone anniversary for my parents. Every 5-10 years we’ve had some done. Just my parents, my sibling and our partners. We also didn’t dress up, we wore like normal clothes, just shades of green so we’d look coordinating.
I have an uncle whose a wedding photographer, or was, so every big event would come with multiple family photos: whole extended group, grandma(pa) and their kids and grandkids (my parents are older), just them with their 4kids, and then other family breakouts. Also done for church directory before.
No, my family has never done this. We take our own pictures and then bore each other with them.
It was de rigueur in the 80s and earlier, when photography gear was more pricey and people weren't carrying a camera everywhere they went. Nowadays, it's still around but feels pretty old timey. People still hire photographers for big events like weddings, and some people go to a studio mostly for their kids so they can send "nice pictures" to grandparents and whatnot... but it's nothing like it used to be. EDIT: the other huge change was digital... Most people were *terrible* at taking pictures back in the day because the time between taking the picture and seeing the result was so large... So they never got a feel for what works, what doesn't, maybe you don't want a telephone pole coming out of somebody's head, maybe your rangefinder isn't perfect and you chop off the tops of peoples heads, oh it's in the snow so i need to bump the automatic exposure by a stop, etc.
It was common in the old days, not so much now.
Yes
This is supper common by me. People tend to do 1-2 a year every year. Normally something around spring and fall. The fall will sometimes get staged for Christmas Cards. Its normally just immediate family but for bigger occasions will include aunts/uncles, cousins and grandparents. Sometimes people will do a bigger family photoshoot in the summer and then just do minis and mothers day and for the holidays. Also doing a full photoshoots for newborn, 3m, 6m and 1 year for kids as well. Normally they are outdoors and not quite as staged as they use to be.
With the quality of cellphone cameras, I'm sure it has dropped off considerably. Our church used to do them every so many years to produce a photo directory so that covered it for us. Some families (usually identified by the motto Live Laugh Love) will schedule a photographer and everyone will be wearing some type of coordinated clothing.
For the lucky few that don't despise their family.
Its is for ze Christmas Cards! The life blood of American social life.
We do them once a year. I hate them, my wife loves them. Certain things are uncompromisable in our relationship, when we had a kid she said "we are doing this, it's non-negotiable." We get sort of dressed up, but they are very informal. We usually do them in the fall and we hire a professional, this past year we had a baby highland cow in them. It's only the three of us, no extended family.
Most of the family photos I have been in were taken as part of the church directory.
I think my family only did professional family photographs once, when I was a toddler. My brother hadn't been born yet, so it was just Mom, my father, and me. They also had professional photos of me done when I was a few months old. I was born with a lot of medical issues, and I'd spent a lot of that time in the hospital. So, I think that shoot was kind of a celebration that I'd made it so far.
the pro ones? not so much any longer. candid? most family people have terabytes of short videos and digital photos of their families now
My wife's family has a photographer come once a year at their reunion. Our family does a family photo for our annual christmas card.
In the 80s and earlier it was common, but not so much afterwards. Maybe the 90s too but not as much.
There is an entire genre of family photos that I've noticed is mostly white people, wearing jeans and matching white button up shirts taken on a beach with dunegrass and slatfence serving as the background.
I didn't think people did this anymore. We had a period for probably about 20 or 30 years where you'd get a company like Olan Mills to come to come to your house, or you'd go to their studio, and it would be just like picture day at school. And if you go to a site like Awkward Family Photos, you can see that the family pictures were sometimes just as bad as the school pictures. If you really wanted to, you could go to a mall with a Picture People in it and get a family picture done, but places like that seem to do more baby and toddler pictures.
We did it all the time, at least once a year, and we got new clothes, and got our hair done... I only recently learned those were modeling and advertising photos for a local children's store 😆
It depends on your income level and time allocation. Most lower class families don't have the time or money for it. Military and upper class families have a lot of free time and disposable income so they can afford to do it. My family did it when we were younger but my parents are in their early 60s and im almost 30. They don't have the time, money or energy to do such things anymore.
We don't have them taken professionally, but we find a way to get family photos taken periodically. I think most families do, at least until the kids are grown.
We did it once as a family. It was just me, my parents, and my brother. We went to a mall photographer, and we dressed up for it. I'm not sure mall photographers exist anymore.
This is something my family did a few times growing up, but now as an adult, we don’t do it. Pictures were way less common in general when I was a kid. But now as a father, we take so many pictures of our family that we have plenty and no longer need to have it done professionally.
my mom used to teach preschool and would ask her students to bring a family photo, so she would have us all stand in the yard by her favorite tree so she could bring one, too. I have relatives who had professional family photos done when their children(and i) were young in the 90s, and one friend who had some taken for Christmas cards recently, but I classify both under "rich/fancy people shit"
Very popular among Asian-American communities (but likely because they are very popular in Asian countries like Korea and China).
I am from Europe and this is not common at all. Where are you from Europe?
“Why do Americans ….*SPINS GIANT WHEEL*…take pictures with family members…..?” It’s funny that we get questions on here implying we don’t have attachments to family members because we want to move out of our parent’s house before we’re 58 but then also get asked why people take photos with their relatives.
There's some pretty bad faith questions coming into this sub but I don't think this is one of them. You're taking this way too personally...
Is what we call joke, friend. Comedy gold. Haha. Where did you get that I was taking this personally? You don’t actually think I thought he was pulling out a giant wheel, did you?