Family Photographer in Elk Grove, CA

Elk Grove has been among California's fastest-growing cities for twenty years, which means a great many families with children close in age and, increasingly, grandparents who have moved to be near them. Multi-generation sessions are more common from here than from anywhere else on this list.

Old Town is where the town still looks like itself: Main Street protected under its own planning rules, the nineteenth-century frontages intact, and Old Town Plaza anchoring the end. It is a few blocks, but they are the right few blocks.

Elk Grove Regional Park handles a group better than most local ground — shade, structure and room to arrange eight people without anyone squinting into the sun. The studio is about twenty-five minutes south when the valley summer makes outdoors unreasonable.

Multi-generation sessions need a little more planning than a family of four, and it is worth saying what that looks like. Larger groups are photographed earlier in the session while everyone is fresh, then broken down into smaller combinations — grandparents with each set of grandchildren, the siblings together, each family on its own — so nobody stands about for an hour. Clothing is coordinated as a palette rather than a uniform. And with eight or ten people, the studio twenty-five minutes south is often the easier venue, because nothing depends on the weather everyone travelled for.