Most families manage a group photograph every few years, usually at a holiday, usually rushed, usually with somebody blinking. This family books a city instead.
A Reunion That Moves Every Year
They are spread across the world. Different countries, different time zones, lives that do not naturally overlap. So every year they pick a date far enough out that nobody has an excuse, agree on a place, and everybody flies in. Some years it is somewhere far away. This year it was Philadelphia, and they picked The Rittenhouse.
I photograph a lot of families who are trying to get everyone into one frame for the first time in ten years, and you can feel it in the pictures. This family treats it as a standing appointment instead, and the difference shows. The kids in these photographs are growing up knowing that once a year, no matter what, they will be in the same place as every cousin they have.
Portraits in the Courtyard
We started outside, in the courtyard beside the hotel. There is a pocket of green there, flowers and hedges and soft even light, and it does not read as center city until you tilt the camera up and catch the buildings behind it. It is one of my favorite places to work in Philadelphia for that exact reason.
We went through the family in pieces first. Couples, parents with their kids, grandparents on their own, each branch in its own grouping. That part is not glamorous. It is just organized. It is also the only reason the giant group portrait later took about ten minutes instead of an hour.
The Moment Nobody Saw Coming
Before we started, one of the men in the family pulled me aside. He was going to propose to his girlfriend during the session, in front of everyone, in the middle of the big group portrait. About three people knew. Not her, obviously. Not most of his family either.
So we built the large group the way you normally would. Chairs across the front for the grandparents, the little kids down low, everybody else filling in behind. I made the picture. Then he slipped out of the frame, came back around the side, and went down on one knee.
She had no idea. What I love about these frames is that you can watch it travel through the group one row at a time. The people who caught it first already have their hands halfway up while the back row is still holding a polite smile for the camera. Then everybody catches up at once.
After that we lost the formation completely. It turned into hugging and crying and people wandering off in pairs, and it took a while to get anyone back into a straight line. Nobody minded.
I photograph a lot of surprise proposals, and almost all of them have the same shape. Two people, me tucked out of sight with a long lens, nobody else around for a block. Doing one inside a family portrait, with the whole family already looking straight at the camera and only a couple of them in on it, is a completely different job. There was exactly one chance to get it.
Finishing the Family Groupings
Then we went back to work, because there were still branches of the family we had not photographed yet. Everybody was loose and happy and had stopped caring about the camera entirely, which is not the worst thing that can happen to a portrait session.
An Individual Portrait of Every Person
Any time I photograph a family this size, I pull each person aside for a portrait of just them. Every single one, youngest to oldest.
It costs about fifteen minutes for the whole family, and it is consistently the thing people are most glad to have later. A group photograph tells you who was there. An individual portrait tells you what one person looked like that year, at that age, in that light. Those are two different records and you want both of them.
I have built wall art collections out of exactly this. Every individual portrait from one family, framed as a set and hung together as a single piece. It works because they were all made in the same spot inside the same hour, so the light matches on every face and nothing fights with anything else. Here is part of the set from this reunion.
Champagne and Toasts Inside
Everyone moved indoors afterward for a cocktail hour. Champagne, people finding each other, the loose kind of hour where the photographs mostly make themselves and my job is to stay out of the way and keep shooting.
Then they did toasts. Family toasts, at a family reunion, on the same night somebody got engaged.
That is the part that stayed with me, more than the proposal did. The proposal was the headline, and it deserved to be. But the toasts were grown adults standing up in front of relatives they see once a year and saying out loud what those people mean to them. Most families never do that. Most families assume everyone already knows.
Do This Every Year
I understand why most family reunions happen once a decade. Coordinating that many people across that many countries is genuinely hard, and somebody has to be the person who does it.
But after photographing this one, I think the annual version is worth the trouble. The photographs get better every year because everyone already knows how it goes. The kids stop performing for the camera. And you end up with a running record of a family actually changing, instead of one picture from years ago and one from last spring with nothing in between.
If you are considering it, put the next date on the calendar before everybody flies home. That is what this family does. As far as I can tell, it is the only reason it keeps happening.
Venue: The Rittenhouse, Philadelphia
Photography: Jordan Brian Studios
Ready to Start Planning?
If your family is planning a reunion, a big anniversary, or just a portrait session while everyone happens to be in the same place, I would love to hear about it. You can see more family sessions in the portfolio, read about how family sessions work, or get in touch and tell me what you have in mind.