What do you mean, “lifestyle?”

When I was commissioned to do this baby portrait I spent some time talking them out of doing it in the studio. Then I spent some time talking them out of going to the Arboretum or any other gardenish places.  All are fine and typical locations to take a family photograph but they can also be so overused that everything starts to look and feel alike.  And 20 years from now no one in the photo even remembers where they were.

I like going into the subject’s environment for a portrait.  Seeing “their world” lends so much more to the story than any seamless paper and softbox.  I feel a real sense of success when I’m able to go into that world and shoot it “as is.”  I might manipulate the available light or put in or remove an object from the frame, but by and large it’s their home where their memories are made and where their life is lived.  So much more important than any “location.”

Often a client says something along the lines of, “But my house isn’t pretty enough.  There are no flowers.”

My response is, “That’s okay, you’re not hiring me to take pictures of flowers.”

When I asked this family to crawl into their bed for a shot they really couldn’t imagine why.  They had never heard of  “Lifestyle Photography.”  I’m not really fond of that vocabulary word once it’s let loose into the mainstream world, but it’s what we have to work with at the moment and certainly my style probably falls a bit into this category.

I like the advice given on this blog by Amy Horlwitz.