Tiffany Luong has accrued a wealth of experience in shooting family portraits. She knows the routine: parents try to maintain their composure as they ask their young children to behave for the person with the camera. Such tension makes for “high pressure situations,” which is partly why the Los Angeles-based photographer switched portraiture disciplines.
From photographing well over 300 families in my portrait business, I have learned that photo sessions for families are high pressure situations. The parents want the children to behave for me (the stranger with the camera) and they want their photos to look good, so they end up disciplining through the gritted teeth of their own forced smiles (‘she said to smile!’). This is why I switched from traditional family portraiture to family documentary, in the pursuit of authentic moments over manufactured ones. This shift has transformed my directing for commercial shoots to gently balance the family dynamic so that everyone feels like they can be themselves while fulfilling the creative briefs asking for natural family moments.
Even during those more relaxed shoots, it’s difficult to wrangle children and get them to sit still for the camera. And yes, that’s the case even if the subjects are your own children, as Tiffany found out. The Angeleno got some imagery of her family documenting old recipes for Dropbox via a stock request. The theme was one of four that Dropbox put forth — along with wedding planning, emergency preparedness, and planning a trip — and the selected images can be found on the company’s website. But the work you see didn’t come without Tiffany’s husband turning into one of those disciplining parents she’s worked with time and again, a development that surprised the photographer.
I am also listed with The Luupe and Dropbox came to them with a stock request for the four experiences seen on their new “Personal Projects” webpage. I hadn’t seen the stock request on the Slack channel, but the community manager emailed me to ask me to take a look at the brief.
I was surprised to see my husband transform into one of those high-stress parents from my portrait days — he started disciplining our son in my defense when he wasn’t following my instructions (‘This is for mama’s work!’). I told everyone to take a deep breath and quick break, and went into photographer mode, where I distract the child a little bit and give him a task to do to dispel a highly tense situation.
Tiffany didn’t have anything in her portfolio to match the ask, so she and her family went about creating new imagery, not only fulfilling a brief but helping Tiffany to expand her archives in the process. The work also required some creativity on Tiffany’s part — she doesn’t have any old recipes (for good reason), so she had to find the right materials.
I knew I didn’t have any in my archives of “creating a family cookbook” scenario with families using devices to document old recipes for a cookbook but have always wanted to shoot a family cookbook project.
I also didn’t have any old recipes — Chinese grandmothers are notorious for never writing anything down with proper measurements — so I sourced some vintage-looking recipe cards online and printed them out at Office Depot on cardstock.
As you can imagine, the shoot was not without its hitches, as Tiffany had to play the role of photographer and mother simultaneously. Still, she got what she needed and received some good feedback as well.
It is super difficult to photograph and mother at the same time, but it was fun to see the genuine curiosity my kids had and see them being themselves (when they weren’t fighting over their dad’s phone!).
The Luupe said this after I submitted: Thank you SO much for jumping on this project and creating the perfect imagery. They loved your images! (And please thank your family as well!)
See more of Tiffany’s work at tiffanyluong.com.
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