I am a sentimental mom like most, and adore pictures of my children. I enjoy Family photos the most, because they are usually few and far between and include ALL six of us. We all know how hard it is to get six people smiling and looking decent all at the same time. I always laugh when I look at our family portraits. We’re all sweet and innocent looking, perfectly dressed, and smiling sweetly. If they only knew, right?! But as mush as I love my crazies to death, I do adore a sweet, perfectly posed family photo!

If you’re looking to get a new family photo taken, or take your own (this post I found tells you how – chances are that you or one of your friends knows their way around a camera), here are a few quick tips and/or ideas that will help you capture some perfect moments of your crazies.

Note: All the photos of my family below were shot by my fantastically talented sister, Andrea Watkins. Check her out on Facebook here if you’re in the Nashville area! All other photos were taken by yours truly.

1. Keep posing. When you’re shooting family photos I have found that keeping a continuous stream of new poses going is helpful with kids. What I mean is come prepared with a list of possibly poses. Try one out. Take a few shots. If it’s working for you, take a few more. If not, move on to another pose. Keeping a lot of variety and experimentation in the poses, makes for some great moments and images.

Make sure to do a variety of poses including some close-ups, some far away, some standing, some sitting… you get the point.

Look for ideas online. Pinterest is a fabulous place to snag some great pose ideas! I recently did a photo shoot for a friend of mine, and tried this pose that I saw on Pinterest. It turned out super cute, and they loved it!

2. Keep it interesting. Don’t always do the expected. Shoot with the pose off to one side of the image like this one I shot below. When you move the focus to somewhere other than the middle of the image, it gives a photo character and makes it interesting.

Play around with filters and backgrounds. Shoot your pics near an old fence or stone wall. Fine a park or old historic home nearby where you can shoot photos at.

When you’re editing photos you’ve taken you can easily play around with different looks, or ask your photographer to try some different filter and image combos.

3. Keep it fun. We love to add some personality to our family photos, so we always try to do at least a few silly poses. These two are from our recent fall photo shoot with my sister.

I love the kissing pic since it shows each of my children’s personalities to a “T”!

4. Keep shooting. If you’re taking your own photos, be sure to keep shooting even after the pose for a few seconds. Some of the best photos come after the pose, when everyone relaxes and smiles and laughs. The picture below is one of my favorites of my boys and wasn’t even planned. It was just a quick high five they tried to accomplish and totally missed after I was done shooting a few posed pics of them in the front yard.

I love their joyful faces!

5. Keep it up. With a family of six, I have found that sometimes it might take a couple tries before we get a good set of pictures. That’s part of the reason I learned how to do some photo shooting myself. That way I can take some pic of the kiddos myself, and then try again another day if they don’t turn out like I want. I know this isn’t possible for everyone, but don’t give up! Not every photo is going to be exactly what you want. Just keep on trying, and you’ll capture some priceless moments with your family!

For more tips, ideas, and creative inspiration, check out my Creative Photo Tips & Ideas board on Pinterest!