Family photography

Families book it during a reunion, a milestone birthday or a holiday that brings three generations to one place: a beach house in Florianópolis, a resort near Porto de Galinhas or Maceió, a pousada in Paraty, or a hotel in Gramado in the southern winter, when coats and scarves replace swimwear. The order of the 30 minutes is fixed in advance because energy is the scarce resource. The full group comes first, while shirts are clean and children are curious, then the households, then small portraits, then free play at the water’s edge, which is where the most natural pictures of children tend to happen.

Light decides the hour. Close to the tropics the sun is high and harsh from late morning to mid-afternoon, so beach sessions go in the first hour after sunrise or the last hour before sunset, and a session that must happen at midday moves into the shade of a garden or a veranda. Some places add a timetable of their own: the natural pools of Porto de Galinhas show only around low tide, so a session that includes them is booked against the Brazilian Navy’s tide table rather than the clock, with a beach fallback if the sea is rough.

The gallery stays private. Brazil’s Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente protects the image of every child, and no family photograph showing a child is published anywhere without written permission from a parent. The gallery link goes to the family alone, and each branch of the family can download its own copies. For an expecting parent, the maternity session is shorter on walking and longer on shade; for a fifteenth birthday party, the debutante coverage is the page to read.