Family Photography
Three Generation Family Photos
Three generations in one frame is the photograph families talk about for years and then book in a hurry, usually in the one week everybody happens to be in the same county. The picture is the easy part. What is hard is the planning around it — the date, the order we work in, and the handful of small decisions that determine whether your oldest generation enjoys the hour or endures it. This is how I plan these sessions.
Book the Date Around the People Who Travel
Every other kind of family session is scheduled around light. A three generation session is scheduled around flights. The constraint is not the golden hour, it is the forty-eight hours when your mother, your brother's family and the cousins from out of state are all within driving distance of the same place at the same time.
For some families that is simply Sunday. Pew Research Center counted 59.7 million U.S. residents living with multiple generations under one roof in March 2021, 18 percent of the population and more than double the 7 percent recorded in 1971. If that is your household, you have the luxury of choosing a date for the right reasons. For everyone else, the whole family in one room is a travel event, and the portrait has to be booked the week the tickets are.
Three practical rules follow from that. Book as soon as the travel is settled, because November and December fill first here. Pick a morning after everybody has had at least one full night in the same time zone. And never schedule the session for the morning somebody flies out — the picture takes the mood of the room, and a room watching the clock looks exactly like a room watching the clock. If the date is still flexible, my guide to the best time of year for outdoor photos covers how Central Coast weather actually behaves month by month.
Count the Groupings Before You Pick the Length
People size a session by the number of people in it. Sessions are actually sized by the number of groupings, and groupings are where three generations get expensive in time. Take a fairly ordinary family of ten: two grandparents, three adult children, two spouses, three grandchildren. The standard list — everyone, the grandparents, the grandparents with the grandchildren, each household, each adult child with their parents, the cousins, the couples — is already fifteen to twenty separate setups, and every one of them needs arranging, lighting and several frames before it is safely made.
That arithmetic is why an extended family almost never fits a short session, something I go through in detail in mini session vs. full session. Here is the running order I work in, and the reasoning behind each step:
- 1
Everyone, together
First, always. Clothes are clean, the toddler is still interested, and nobody has used up their patience yet. This is the frame most likely to end up printed large, so it gets the best version of everybody rather than whatever is left at the end.
- 2
The oldest generation, on their own
Two or three minutes while the rest of the family stands off to the side. This is the portrait almost nobody asks for in advance and almost everybody is grateful for later. If one grandparent is no longer with you, this is where we photograph the other one alone, properly, with the time it deserves.
- 3
Grandparents with all the grandchildren
The frame that explains why you booked the session. Expect to make several — somebody is always blinking, and the good one usually happens about four frames after everyone has stopped trying.
- 4
Each household
Each adult child with their spouse and their own children. These are the images that go home with each family, and they are a large part of why a three generation session is worth more than one group photo.
- 5
Each adult child with their parents
A grown son or daughter standing with their mother and father. Simple, quiet, and almost never photographed after about the age of twenty-two.
- 6
The siblings, then the cousins
Adult siblings together, then the children of that generation together. The cousin frame is the one the youngest people in the room will care about in thirty years.
- 7
The couples
Each pair on their own while everyone else takes a break. Quick, and the easiest way to send every household home with something that is only theirs.
- 8
Whatever happens last
The final fifteen minutes are deliberately unstructured — walking, talking, the grandchildren climbing on somebody. The posed frames are the record; these are usually the ones that make people laugh when the gallery opens.
Photograph the Oldest Generation First, and Alone
The reason is partly practical. Energy in a group like this runs downhill from the first frame, and the two people who most need to be photographed well are often the two with the least stamina for standing on a lawn. Making their portraits early means they are made when everybody is at their best, and it gives your parents permission to sit down for the rest of the session without feeling like they are holding anything up.
The other reason is the one families tell me afterward. Almost nobody books a three generation session in order to get a portrait of the grandparents by themselves — and that is very often the frame that ends up framed. A couple who have been married fifty years usually have one good photograph of just the two of them, and it is from their wedding. Two minutes at the start of your session fixes that.
So tell me in advance if there is something I should know: a diagnosis, a first visit in three years, a grandparent who has said this is the last time everyone will be together. I will not make a fuss about it in front of the family, and I will make sure the frames that matter are made in the first twenty minutes rather than hoped for in the last ten.
Dressing Three Generations Without Matching Them
Matching outfits are hard enough across one household. Across three generations they are close to impossible, because a seventy-five-year-old, a forty-year-old and a seven-year-old are not shopping in the same places, are not comfortable in the same shapes, and do not agree on what counts as dressed up. Every family who tries it ends up with at least one person who looks like they were talked into something, and that always shows.
Do this instead: agree on a palette of three or four colors, then let each person choose their own clothes inside it. Soft neutrals with one accent work almost anywhere on the Central Coast; deeper tones hold up better in the studio and in winter light. Ask everyone to pick something they already like wearing, with sleeves and a hemline they will not spend the hour adjusting, in a fabric with enough weight that it does not cling. Solids and large, soft patterns photograph cleanly; small busy prints shimmer from across a room and pull the eye away from faces.
One extra note for the oldest generation. Silver hair and older skin both look wonderful against mid-tone and jewel colors, and both get washed out by stark white, so steer your parents away from a white shirt if the rest of the group is in light neutrals — soft cream, warm gray, navy and olive are kinder. My full what to wear for family photos guide covers palette building, coordinating without matching, and dressing children in more detail, and I send wardrobe guidance to every family before their session anyway.
Choose the Location for the Hardest Hundred Feet
A three generation session is not judged by its prettiest background. It is judged by the hardest hundred feet in it. Ask these four questions about any location before anybody falls in love with the view:
| Ask | Why it decides the location |
|---|---|
| How far is it from the parking space to the first setup? | This single number rules more locations in and out than scenery does. If the oldest person in the group would arrive winded, the background does not matter. |
| Is there somewhere to sit between groupings? | Most of the session is somebody else's turn. A bench, a low wall or a chair you brought turns forty minutes of waiting into forty minutes of resting. |
| Is there a restroom, and where? | With three generations in the group there is almost always someone who needs one, and the answer decides whether a break costs five minutes or twenty. |
| Is the ground even, and what is it made of? | Soft sand, loose gravel and sloped lawn are hard work in dress shoes at any age. Level, firm ground keeps everybody steady and keeps heads where I posed them. |
Locally, that usually points to one of three places. Mission Plaza in San Luis Obispo is my first pick outdoors for a big group, because it hands me four or five genuinely different backgrounds without moving anyone more than a hundred feet; Laguna Lake Park is the flattest option in town, with parking close to the grass. Both are covered in my guide to the best photo locations in San Luis Obispo. And when someone in the group uses a walker, tires quickly, or simply cannot face wind and sand, my Grover Beach studio is the honest answer: level floor, chairs, a restroom, no weather, and light that is identical at ten in the morning and four in the afternoon.
If the family has its heart set on the coast, plan the access rather than hoping. The California Coastal Commission's beach wheelchair list shows motorized and manual chairs available for two-hour loans at Avila Lighthouse Suites, 550 Front Street in Avila Beach, and chairs at the Oceano Dunes entrance stations on a first-come, first-served basis; the Commission states that the beaches on its map lend their chairs free of charge. Call first — these are small fleets, and Pismo Beach does not appear on that list at all.
Build the Group Around a Seated Anchor
The arrangement that works for almost every three generation group starts with the oldest generation seated, near the center, and everybody else built outward and upward from them. It is not a concession. It is simply the best composition available: it gives the frame a clear place for the eye to land, it stacks heads at four or five different heights instead of one flat row, and it quietly removes the clock that starts ticking the moment somebody has to stand still on a lawn in good shoes.
From there the rules are small and they repeat. Everybody touches somebody — a hand on a shoulder, an arm through an arm — because a group that is not connected reads as a group that was assembled. No two heads at exactly the same height. The youngest children go in front of the grandparents rather than in their arms, so nobody is holding a wriggling three-year-old for a whole frame. And I always make a few close ones: hands, a wedding ring, a grandmother and a grandchild in profile. Those are the frames that carry a whole session when they are printed small and hung together.
The youngest generation is the other half of this job, and preparing them is genuinely different from preparing adults. If there are toddlers in your group, read how to prepare kids for family photos before the session — the running order above already front-loads the frames that need them.
Decide What You Are Printing Before the Session
A three generation session is the one case where the files genuinely are not the point. Four households were in those pictures, and four households want something. If nobody decides what that something is, the gallery gets shared around, admired, and left on a hard drive, which is how a family ends up with no photograph of their grandparents on any wall in the country.
The combination I design most often for extended families is one large group piece for the grandparents' home, a smaller matching piece for each household, and a designer album that holds the whole session in one place. If several pieces are going on one wall, my guide to gallery wall layout for family photos covers sizing and arrangement before anything is ordered. Work that out at your design appointment, while everyone still remembers the day.
How I Run a Three Generation Session
Before the date I ask for your list: who is traveling, who is coming, who has trouble standing, who has to leave early, and which grouping you would be most upset to lose. I build the running order from that, send wardrobe guidance to everybody rather than only to the person who booked, and settle the location against the four questions above instead of against a photograph somebody saw online.
On the day, I direct every pose and expression, so nobody in your family has to wonder what to do with their hands — including the people who have spent seventy years insisting they hate having their picture taken. That direction is the whole service, and it is built into every family session and into the experience from the consultation through the design appointment.
Sources
- Pew Research Center — The Demographics of Multigenerational Households (“In March 2021, there were 59.7 million U.S. residents who lived with multiple generations under one roof”; “The share of the U.S. population living in multigenerational households in 2021 was 18%”; “The share of the U.S. population in multigenerational homes has more than doubled, from 7% in 1971 to 18% in 2021”)
- California Coastal Commission — Beach Wheelchairs (“All of the beaches on the map below own their own wheelchairs and lend them free of charge”; Avila Beach: “Motorized and manual chairs are available for 2-hour loans at Avila Lighthouse Suites hotel, 550 Front St, Avila Beach”; Oceano Dunes: chairs available at the entrance stations on a first-come, first-served basis. No Pismo Beach entry as of November 2026.)