Family photography at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Family photoshoot, Wakefield, West Yorkshire

A few weeks ago I had a family photoshoot at the wonderful Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. I met up with Kathryn, David and their lovely kids for a little documentary family shoot.

Pre-wed shoot or family shoot

Kathryn and David are soon (fingers crossed) getting married at Yorkshire Sculpture Park so when they booked me to shoot their wedding (before the world was broken) they thought they would also like a family shoot as a bit of a pre-wed shoot, so that’s exactly what we did.

A few weeks ago I headed over to YSP to meet up with them. Family shoots can either be amazing and everything goes to plan, or they can turn into chaos. Fortunately for me it was the former and everything was brilliant.

Documentary, with a few group shots

When I do a family shoot, I usually let the kids do what kids do and try to capture them, sometimes they need a little encouragement so I often find myself joining in with their games which is always great fun. Early in the shoot I realised they enjoy being dinosaurs and that gets fabulous reactions. I dug out my best raptor impression and we were away.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The YSP is such an amazing place, it’s massive and is basically a photographers dream, there’s so many places to go. As the family are very fond of the location I just asked them which areas they wanted to be photographed in and we headed to all of them.

Deer Shelter

One of my favourite places to photograph is the Deer Shelter, I’ve shot so many people in there so I’m always happy to head there with a fab family. When doing a shoot, I usually just encourage an idea and then sit back and see what happens from there. We had the kids running around, jumping on benches and pretty much everything just to create some fabulous, fun pictures.

Old school

This shoot was absolutely brilliant, it reminded me of growing up in the good old days where families went outside, played games, got dirty and made use of their environment. I wanted to capture the whole story, so some pictures were far away, some were very close, it was just great fun!

Picnic spot

For the final part of the shoot, Kathryn and David wanted to head over to their special picnic spot. This was where they actually had their first kiss and the reason that The Yorkshire Sculpture Park is so special to them. We had a little walk, and shot lots of photos on the way which was good fun.

When we arrived operation picnic began and all manner of treats were dished out. I took loads more pictures as the picnic spot holds special memories and then we headed off.

Puddles

On the way back to the car, the kids found some puddles so it would have been incredibly rude not to jump around in them. We also found lots of Autumnal fallen leaves so obviously the kids took great delight in chucking them at me whilst I layed on the floor.

The shoot was so much fun and everyone enjoyed themselves. We got so many fabulous pictures and memories from the shoot which is the main thing. I’m looking forward to photographing Kathryn and David’s wedding later this week.

If you’re looking for some fabulous family photos then please get in touch john@johnsteelphotography.com