The photo you end up loving is almost never the one everybody was looking at the camera for.
It is the one right after. The one where your four year old has given up, your teenager is laughing at him, and you are laughing at both of them.
Yes, We Get the One for Grandma
Let me get this out of the way, because it is what every parent is quietly worried about.
We get the good one. Everybody looking, everybody smiling, everybody's eyes open. It goes on the wall and it goes to your mother and it gets used for the holiday card.
We just do not spend the whole hour chasing it.
I get the formal frames early, while the little ones still have gas in the tank. Then we let the session turn into what it wants to be, and that is where the photos you actually love come from.
Kids Have About Twenty Good Minutes. Plan Around It.
Nobody has ever improved a family session by pushing a tired three year old through a fifth setup.
Book around the nap, not around your calendar
Late afternoon works for most families. Early morning works better for the under-fives. If your kid falls apart at 5:30 every single day, tell me that, and we will not schedule a session at 5:00.
Feed them first
Snacks in the bag. Not the ones that stain.
Let me be the one who is annoying
You do not need to spend the hour hissing "stand up straight" at your son. That never once produced a good photo, and it makes you look tense in the frame.
Let me handle the kids. I will give them something to do. Your job is to be with your family and let me do mine.
What to Wear, Without Overthinking It
Coordinate, do not match. Pick two or three colors that work together and let everybody pull from those.
Soft, muted tones photograph better than bright saturated ones, and they age much better on a wall five years from now.
Skip the big logos and the busy patterns. They pull the eye straight off your faces.
Dress for the weather, because this is Florida and nobody looks happy in a wool sweater in October.
And one honest note: check what you are wearing on your feet before you leave the house. Full-length family photos catch a lot of flip flops that nobody meant to be in the picture.
Where We Shoot Around Central Florida
Downtown Winter Garden
Brick streets, shade, and a lot of variety inside a couple of blocks, which matters when you have small kids and a limited walking radius. The old weathered doors along the side streets and the plaza by the Christmas tree in December are two of my regular stops.
Winter Park
Central Park and Park Avenue. The rose garden, the fountain, the stone pergola. Casa Feliz is right there too, and its courtyard and old brick give you something more architectural than a park does.
Lake Louisa State Park
Clermont, about forty minutes out. Open fields, cypress, sand and lake, and the best golden hour within an hour of Orlando. It is also the easiest place on this list to fit a very large group, which matters more than people expect.
Where you are staying
If you are in town on vacation, your resort probably photographs better than you think. I have shot family sessions on resort grounds around Disney Springs and elsewhere in the Orlando area, and I show up early to scout the property so I already know where the good light is before your family walks out the door.
Your house
In-home sessions are underrated, especially with a new baby or with grandparents who are not up for a long walk in the heat. Your kitchen at 9am with the light coming in is a real location.
Extended Family and Reunions
If you have three generations flying in from three states, this is the one week all year that photo is possible.
Big groups need a plan. I shoot the full group first, while everybody is fresh and before anyone has wandered off. Then we work down through the combinations: each family unit, the grandkids together, the grandparents alone, the siblings.
Tell me ahead of time who needs to be in what, and I will build the shot list so we are not standing around trying to remember at the end.
One thing worth saying to anyone hosting a reunion: the grandparents will not always be there. Those photos become the most valuable ones in the whole gallery faster than anyone expects.
When to Book in Florida
Two things drive the family photo calendar here, and neither of them is the weather you are used to.
October and November are the crush. Everybody wants holiday card photos, the humidity finally breaks, and every good photographer in Central Florida books solid. If you want fall photos, reach out in August or September. By the third week of October the good golden hour slots are gone.
Spring is underrated. March and April give you comfortable temperatures, green everywhere, and almost no competition for the calendar. If you do not need a holiday card, this is the easier season to book and the more relaxed session to shoot.
Summer works if you shoot early or late. A 7:30am session in July is genuinely pleasant. A 2pm one is not, and no amount of editing fixes what heat does to a family's mood.
If you are visiting from out of state, tell me your travel dates as soon as you have them. Vacation weeks are short and I would rather hold a slot than tell you I am full the week you land.
What You Get
Family sessions start at $400, indoors or out.
Every gallery includes high resolution digital files with no cap on downloads. Most photographers limit how many photos you can pull. I do not. You get all the best frames from the session, professionally edited, and you download some or all of them, entirely up to you.
You get an online gallery you can share with family and order prints from.
Turnaround is within three weeks. I aim to beat it and usually do, but I would rather build in a buffer than miss a promise.
Travel outside the Orlando metro may add a fee. I will tell you upfront if that applies to your location rather than letting it surface later.
Book It Before Another Year Goes By
Most families I hear from say a version of the same thing. We have been meaning to do this for two years.
The kids are the reason to stop meaning to. They are a different size every single year, and the version of them you have right now is only available right now.
Tell me a bit about your family, where you are, and what you have in mind, and I will get you an exact quote.
David Stella Photography
Orlando and Central Florida
321.475.7792
