Documentary Hong Kong Family Portraits
Hong Kong Documentary Family Portraits
Recently while photographing a family in Stanley, in the south part of Hong Kong Island, I was struck by what documentary family portraits means. I am getting my Hong Kong Mini Sessions rolling this year. There are short sessions designed to get the annual family portrait, and a bunch of shots of the kids and some individual shots. They take 20 minutes and are fairly focused. We don’t have time to ‘let things happen’, I direct almost everything in order to give families as wide a range of images in a short period of time. So far they are going very well. It’s a perfect solution to the permanently time-stressed, extremely-scheduled Hong Kong family. The relaxed Hong Kong family photoshoot.
Mostly I ‘documentary-style’ shots are ones snapped at a time when the kids are mostly ignoring me, or better yet, have forgotten I’m even there. It is, for me, the most satisfying part of kids photography, and something I think I do differently than every other family photographer, at least in my part of the world.
Since 2006 my bread and butter jobs were the one hour Hong Kong photo session. These allowed for time “kids to be kids”, which has been my motto since Day One. I usually work pretty hard to get a bunch of required shots right off the bat. But if I feel we are “winning”, which is usually the case, I let kids just go and play a bit. This shot above is the perfect example, to me, of documentary-style family photo. Just a kid being curious and doing “kid stuff”. It’s also a great example of the types of locations we have here. Once you get out of the core, there are incredible beaches, both sandy and rocky, as well as some of the world’s greatest public green spaces. And of course, Stanley itself is one of my Top Five locations in Hong Kong, along with Star Ferry, Repulse Bay Beach, Kowloon Park, and The Botanical Gardens.
