Family Photography on Madeira

How a family session runs

I give one or two directions at the start, then I keep shooting. Children stop performing within a few minutes if nobody is asking them to smile. Most of the frames worth keeping come from the in between: someone picking up a stone, someone running back to a parent.

I have been photographing families for 18 years, and the main skill is knowing when to wait and when to put the camera down for five minutes.

Family sessions at Seixal

Seven family sessions are published on this site. Four of them are at Seixal.

The sand is black volcanic grit and the cliffs behind it are green and steep. Anything pale that a child wears cuts straight out of that background. There is enough to explore that nobody has to be told to look natural. Jason's family and Cindy's both came in August, four days apart.

The cost is the drive. Seixal is about fifty minutes from Funchal on the north coast road, and that is each way. With a toddler it is a real consideration.

Family locations near Funchal

Three of the seven families stayed in or near town. Israel's family used Santa Catarina Park in February: flat ground, in the city, nothing to walk before you start. Sara's family took Praia Formosa in May, ten minutes from the centre.

Both are the answer when a child naps at a fixed hour, or when the forecast is unstable and you want to stay near your apartment in case it turns. There is a longer guide on shooting with young children.

Manuela's family went the other way in October and took the Fanal laurel forest, an hour out, in the fog. It is wet up there and the ground is muddy.

Time of day

We always agree on the start time individually, depending on the goals of the shoot and your wishes. In midsummer the evening light starts after seven, and for a family with young children that can be past bedtime.

Shoot in that light and accept a late night, or shoot earlier and accept flatter light. Fanal is the exception: it works in the middle of a clear day, and it works better in fog than in sun.

Sunset on Madeira moves by about four hours between December and June, so the same session starts at five in winter and at nine in July. The month by month breakdown has the numbers.

Group size and what the packages cover

Classic at 450 EUR is what most families book: one or two locations, up to two hours, 50 edited photos. It fits three to five people comfortably.

Larger groups need more time. Eight people need a group frame plus smaller combinations, and that does not fit in an hour. The US family took Extended in April and used it for the old town and Seixal in one day.

From three people to a crowd

I photograph families of different sizes, and often it is close to a crowd. Any group of people can be placed in the frame in an interesting way if everyone has the motivation to be photographed. That is not always the case, and then I go to the traditional classical methods: we construct the frames, keep them restrained, more classical in the posing.

That has a charm of its own. The nature of Madeira, the light, my own artistic decisions as an author and the honesty of the emotional state people are in: all of it turns into work you want to look at and want to show.