A Family Photoshoot in Spain With Young Children, Realistically

Start with the hour, not the place

The usual approach is to pick a beautiful location and then find a slot for it. With small children, do it the other way round.

Spain keeps Central European Time while sitting geographically west, so the sun sets very late in summer — around 21:25 in Barcelona in June. That means the golden hour every photographer wants falls after many small children have fallen apart. More on the timing.

Two workable answers:

• First thing in the morning. Around eight in summer. The light is the same quality as evening, the locations are empty, and the children are rested. For anyone under six this is the single best decision available.
• Autumn or winter. In December the sun sets around 17:20, so good light lines up with a normal family afternoon. Fewer people, lower prices, and the light does the work.

Midday in July and August is not an option: hard light, real heat, uncomfortable children.

Locations that forgive children, and ones that do not

Forgiving:

• The Turia gardens in Valencia. Nine kilometres of sunken park with no traffic anywhere on it. Flat, wide, shaded by the banks. The easiest location in our whole catalogue with a pushchair.
• Parc de la Ciutadella, Barcelona. Green, shaded, a monumental fountain doing the background work for you, and no road nearby. Tree cover makes it one of the few places that survives midday.
• Barceloneta or any beach. Children run, and the best family photographs almost always come from that rather than from a pose.
• La Concha in San Sebastián. North-facing, so the light is soft rather than harsh, and at low tide there is an enormous flat beach.

Not forgiving:

• The Albaicín in Granada and Santa Cruz in Seville. Beautiful, and both are steep cobbled mazes. Impossible with a pushchair and stressful with a child who wanders.
• Park Güell's monumental zone. Timed ticket, fixed entry slot. A rigid schedule is exactly what you do not want.
• Anything with a cliff edge. Ronda is spectacular and the path below the bridge has no railing in places.

How long it actually lasts

Sessions are sold by the hour and children do not read the contract. The realistic shape:

• First ten minutes — nobody is comfortable, including the adults. Normal.
• Ten to forty — this is where nearly every good photograph comes from.
• After forty-five — with children under five, quality falls off a cliff.

Which means one hour is usually the right booking, not two. An hour well spent beats two hours where the last forty minutes are spent negotiating.

Things that help more than they should

Bring food. A hungry child cannot be fixed with patience. Something small and not messy, for after the first stretch.

Do not use the photographs as leverage. "Behave or we're leaving" turns the session into a punishment before it starts. It works better framed as a walk that happens to have someone taking pictures.

Let them move. The photographs families actually hang are rarely everyone looking at the camera. They are the ones in between — someone laughing, someone being carried, someone running towards the water.

Tell the photographer the ages in advance. A session with a six-month-old and a session with a seven-year-old are different jobs, and a photographer who knows will plan a different route.

Do not schedule it for the arrival day. Travel tiredness plus children plus a camera is a predictable combination.

What to wear

Comfort beats everything. A child in clothing that itches appears in every frame as a child in clothing that itches, and editing does not fix it. Nothing bought that morning, nothing tight at the neck, and a spare set if there is any water involved. There is a fuller guide to what to wear.

Coordinate the family into two or three colours rather than putting everyone in the same shirt — matching outfits photograph as a uniform.

The honest version

You are buying an hour of your family being together in a place you travelled to, with someone whose job is to notice the moments you are too involved to see. Some of it will be chaotic. The chaotic frames are usually the ones you keep.

The photographers on Photo Spain each set their own packages; the concierge can narrow it to people who shoot families in your city, which matters more than portfolio style when someone needs to know where the shade is at four o'clock.