Why Fall Family Portraits Become More Valuable With Every Year That Passes

Maine gives us extraordinary autumn scenery, but the foliage is not actually the most important thing we are photographing

Every autumn in Maine, families begin thinking about photographs for Christmas cards, grandparents, albums, framed artwork, and the annual record of how much their children have grown, which makes fall family portrait season one of the busiest periods of the year for photographers. The foliage is beautiful, the light changes, sweaters come out, and suddenly there is an obvious reason to gather everyone together and make the appointment.

What I think we sometimes miss, however, is that the landscape is merely providing the setting for something considerably more important.

I am Rebecca Pinkham Stevenson, founder and Creative Director of The Beaux & Arrows Collective, and after years of photographing families, I have become increasingly interested in creating photographs that preserve more than everyone's appearance. I want to preserve the proportions of your family at this particular moment: the toddler who still fits against your chest, the child with missing front teeth, the siblings who cannot stop making each other laugh, the teenager becoming increasingly independent, the way your husband's hand naturally finds your back, and all of the tiny interactions that seem completely ordinary until they disappear.

Fall in Maine happens quickly, but childhood happens faster.

Why do so many families choose fall for their annual portraits?

There are practical reasons, of course. Autumn photographs transition beautifully into Christmas cards and holiday gifts, children have returned to school, families have settled back into routines, and Maine provides an extraordinary range of natural color and texture without requiring an elaborate portrait set.

There is also something particularly well suited to family photography about autumn itself. Layers allow people to move comfortably, beautiful coats and knits introduce texture, children can run through orchards and fields, and the landscape can range from brilliant foliage to weathered stone walls, evergreens, golden grasses, rocky coastline, and increasingly dramatic October skies.

At Beaux & Arrows, I design fall portrait sessions around the relationship between family, wardrobe, environment, light, and movement rather than treating foliage as the entire reason for the photograph. That distinction allows the finished images to feel unmistakably autumnal without becoming seasonal decorations that only make sense for three weeks of the year.

What if your children do not cooperate for photographs?

This is probably the concern I hear most frequently from parents, and it is also one of the reasons I structure family sessions the way I do.

Children are not small adults, and I do not expect them to behave like adults simply because someone purchased a portrait session. A three year old may need to explore before standing with the family, a toddler may want to be held, siblings may become silly together, and a child who has been instructed repeatedly to smile may decide that smiling is the final thing they intend to do that afternoon.

Rather than fighting those realities, I work with them.

There is direction and structure throughout the session, but there is also movement, conversation, play, snuggling, walking, exploring, and enough flexibility to recognize when a child needs something different. My existing fall sessions are deliberately designed around children's attention spans and personalities rather than expecting children to perform continuously for the camera.

The goal is not to prove that your children can behave beautifully for twenty minutes. The goal is to make beautiful photographs of the children you actually have.

Do you need perfectly behaved children to have beautiful family photographs?

No, and some of my favorite photographs happen precisely because something did not go according to plan.

A child who suddenly runs toward a parent creates movement. A toddler burying her face into her mother's shoulder creates intimacy. A sibling whispering something inappropriate enough to make everyone laugh may produce the first completely genuine expression of the session.

I will absolutely create the beautifully composed family portraits that parents and grandparents want, but I am also watching what happens immediately before and immediately afterward because those small transitions often contain the photographs that become unexpectedly important.

A successful family gallery should contain both: the photograph worthy of a large frame above the fireplace and the photograph that makes you laugh because you know exactly what was happening.

What should your family wear for fall portraits?

You do not need matching outfits, and I generally prefer that you do not attempt to create them.

I think about a family's wardrobe as a collection in which colors, textures, silhouettes, and levels of formality belong together without becoming identical. For Maine autumn portraits, wool, cashmere, corduroy, velvet, denim, suede, leather, substantial cotton, beautiful coats, chunky knits, long dresses, tailored trousers, and classic children's clothing can create depth without distracting from the people wearing them.

Cream, camel, chocolate, navy, forest green, burgundy, oatmeal, warm gray, muted olive, cognac, and softer autumnal shades can all work beautifully, but the location matters enormously. Clothing designed for a golden orchard should not automatically be identical to what I would recommend against gray granite and the October Atlantic.

Most importantly, everyone should be able to move, sit, walk, hug, and comfortably exist in what they are wearing. A child's itchy sweater or uncomfortable shoes can become much more visually significant than the perfect color palette ever will.

Should you choose an orchard, field, forest, estate, or the Maine coast?

Choose the environment that supports the photograph you actually want rather than automatically selecting the location with the brightest foliage.

An orchard can feel nostalgic and playful, an open field can create softness and movement, historic architecture and old stone can produce something more traditional and editorial, while the Maine coast in October creates an entirely different palette of granite, dune grass, ocean, wind, substantial knits, coats, and wonderfully imperfect hair.

The ages and personalities of your children matter as well. A family with energetic young children may benefit enormously from somewhere they can safely move and explore, while an older family interested in a more formal portrait may prefer architecture, stone, or a quieter landscape.

A spectacular red maple cannot compensate for poor light, distracting surroundings, or an environment that makes everyone uncomfortable. I would much rather have beautiful light, room for your family to interact, and a quieter landscape that allows the people to remain the most important part of the photograph.

Are twenty minutes really enough for family portraits?

For many families, particularly those with younger children, twenty minutes can be remarkably productive when the session has been properly planned.

My fall mini sessions are intentionally structured so that we can work efficiently through the entire family, children together, individual children, each child with each parent, parents together, movement, interaction, and candid moments as the family allows. Current Beaux & Arrows fall mini sessions include a twenty minute portrait experience and a gallery of at least 35 finalized digital photographs, rather than requiring families to select only a handful of images afterward.

A longer session certainly has its place when a family wants multiple locations, wardrobe changes, extended family, more elaborate styling, or a broader storytelling experience, but longer does not automatically mean better when small children are involved.

Sometimes twenty engaged minutes will give us far more than an hour spent asking a tired four year old for one more smile.

What if Mom is always the person taking the photographs?

Then this may be one of the most important reasons to schedule the session.

Mothers frequently become the unofficial archivists of their families, which means they may have thousands of photographs of their children and remarkably few beautiful photographs showing that they were there too.

Years of birthdays, vacations, Christmas mornings, ordinary afternoons, school events, and family adventures can be extensively documented while one person remains disproportionately absent because she was standing behind the phone.

I pay particular attention to photographs of each parent with the children individually for exactly this reason. Your children deserve photographs of themselves with you, and those photographs may eventually matter to them every bit as much as they matter to you now.

What about Dad, who would rather be doing almost anything else?

He is welcome too.

One of the advantages of a thoughtfully structured session is that family photographs do not need to consume an entire afternoon. Nobody needs to spend hours performing enthusiasm for the camera, and nobody is expected to arrive knowing how to pose.

I provide the direction, watch the light, arrange the family, adjust hands and posture when necessary, move us through combinations efficiently, and create opportunities for genuine interaction so that parents can concentrate on their children rather than managing the photography.

The experience should feel considerably easier than the preparation parents sometimes imagine beforehand.

Are fall family portraits really worth doing every year?

You certainly do not have to photograph your family professionally every year, but there is something extraordinary about what happens when you do it regularly enough to create a visual record.

One gallery may feel like family photographs.

Ten years of galleries become family history.

You begin to see children growing into their faces, siblings changing relationships, babies becoming teenagers, parents changing too, hairstyles and missing teeth and favorite dresses disappearing, and the physical relationship between everyone gradually shifting as children become too large to be carried.

The photographs that feel almost redundant now can become the ones you study later because they contain details you had completely forgotten.

What should you actually do with all of these photographs?

Print them.

Digital galleries are extraordinarily convenient, and I provide them because families should have access to their photographs, but I do not believe a family's photographic history should exist exclusively behind a password or inside a phone.

A portrait becomes something different when your children grow up seeing it on the wall of their home. An album can be opened by a child who does not need to know where the photographs were stored, which app contained them, or whether a particular cloud account still exists twenty years later.

That is why I also think about portrait photography in relationship to the home itself. Museum quality prints, albums, framed portraits, and thoughtfully designed galleries allow photographs to become part of the environment in which the family actually lives.

Why photograph your family this fall instead of waiting until next year?

Because next year will give you a different family.

Perhaps only slightly different, but different nonetheless.

The baby will walk. The toddler will stop mispronouncing that word you secretly hope she never learns to say correctly. Someone will lose a tooth, grow six inches, cut their hair, leave elementary school, start driving, go to college, or simply become a little less willing to crawl into your lap.

None of that is tragic. It is exactly what children are supposed to do.

It is also why family photography matters.

When I photograph your family in the middle of a Maine autumn, I certainly want the foliage, the beautiful wardrobe, the flattering light, the composition, and the portrait you will be proud to hang in your home, but underneath all of that is something much simpler.

I am preserving evidence of what it felt like to have them this small.

The leaves will change again next year.

Your family will not return in quite the same form.

The Beaux & Arrows Collective
Fall Family Portraits in Maine
Portraiture by Rebecca Pinkham Stevenson

For the walls of your home now, and the people who will call you family long after.