Tony Urban Photography – Senior Photo Art, Pittsburgh Wedding Photographer – Somerset, Johnstown, Greensburg

When I first started my business, the last types of photos I wanted to shoot were family portraits.  We’ve all seen the cookie cutter images churned out by Sears or Wal Mart.  Heck, the only “professional” photos my grandparents ever had taken were Olan Mills portraits, shot in the church basement.  I think both sets of grandparents have the exact same pose even though they were taken years apart by different photographers in different church basements.

Don’t get me wrong, these photos are good.  They’re perfectly lit, perfectly posed, perfectly composed, etc.  Every wrist bend and head tilt and smile is perfect.  But people aren’t perfect, which is why creating some illusion of perfection in their portraits just seems so fake to me.  It reminds me so much of Richard Avedon’s essay “Borrowed Dogs” in which he discusses his own “family photos”.  It’s the attitude that Avedon mentions that made me want to avoid shooting family portraits at all costs.

But things have evolved over the past year and I’ve been fortunate enough to meet some amazing families who don’t want fake photos.  Sure, we still do a couple “everyone look at the camera and smile” photos (and I have some below), but I want the people in the photos to feel comfortable and to be themselves.  I love laughter and silliness and genuine happiness.  I love working with families when they can be natural in front of the camera and have fun during the shoot.

Yesterday I had the chance to work with an incredible family from Johnstown.  We had a tremendous amount of fun during the hour shoot and I just love the photos we created.  And even if we couldn’t pull off the “jump shot” with the junior ballerinas, I think the resulting images are special in their own way. 

Many thanks to Jill & her family for being so awesome to work with!