Family Photography in Wanowrie, Pune

Doing nothing in particular

The family photographs people love most are usually of nobody doing anything.

Sitting on a bed, making tea, arguing mildly over something, a child climbing on somebody who is trying to read.

Those are almost never what gets booked, because a family session is understood to mean everybody arranged and looking at the camera.

That arranged photograph matters and it should exist. It is simply a poor description of what a family is actually like.

A session split between the two — arranged first, then an hour of everybody being left alone at home — produces both.

The second half needs nothing prepared and no cooperation, which is why it works with children who will not sit still.

It is worth asking for explicitly, because nobody offers it and most families assume it is not a thing you can book.

It is worth photographing the parts of a house nobody would choose to show.

The kitchen mid-use, the corridor with everybody's shoes in it, the balcony with washing on it. Those are where a family actually lives.

The rooms people want photographed are usually the ones least used, which is why so many family sets feel slightly like a property listing.

It is also worth photographing people doing something rather than being together.

Cooking, arguing about the television, one person reading while another talks at them. That is what being a family looks like from the inside.

None of it requires anybody to cooperate, which is why it works when a formal session has run out of patience.