A Family Photoshoot in Italy With Young Children

The hour that actually works

Every travel-photography guide points you at golden hour. With a toddler it is a trap. In Rome in mid-June the sun sets around 20:45, so the good evening light runs from roughly 19:45 to 20:40. That is dinner, bath, and the precise moment a three-year-old stops being a reasonable person. You book beautiful light and get forty minutes of crying.

The window that works under five is the first hour after breakfast: 8:30 to 9:30, or 9 to 10 at the outside. Three things line up there. The child has slept and eaten and has not yet been marched through two churches and a ticket queue. The light is still low enough to be soft and directional: at nine on a June morning the sun is only about thirty-five degrees up, which under the umbrella pines of Villa Borghese gives dapple rather than the flat glare of midday. And the crowds have not arrived. The field at Pisa is quiet until the first coaches unload around ten, and Lucca's walls at half eight belong to dog walkers and a few cyclists.

Midday is out for reasons unrelated to photography. Most children between one and three nap somewhere in the 12:30 to 14:30 band, and in July a piazza at one is reflected stone with nowhere to stand.

Choose a floor, not a facade

The instinct is to book the landmark: the Trevi Fountain, the Duomo steps, the Rialto. With a child under five that produces forty-five minutes of an adult holding a small wrist so nobody runs into a road, a canal, or someone else's wedding party. Everyone looks tense because everyone is tense.

Pick somewhere with a floor instead: ground the child may cross on their own legs, in a direction they choose. The frames that survive are the running, the being carried, and the moment a parent's face changes.

• Villa Borghese in Rome is the best ground in Italy for this. The oval of Piazza di Siena is soft dirt and grass with nothing to fall off, the lake with the Temple of Aesculapius is worth twenty minutes of ducks on its own, and the pines break the light from half eight onwards. Benches everywhere, bikes for hire, a kiosk by the water. One date to check: the oval is closed for the international show jumping in late May.
• The lawn at Pisa does something no other landmark does: it puts a great deal of grass between a two-year-old and anything breakable. Much of the field is walkable, though sections get roped off in rotation for reseeding and the stewards move you along the moment you cross a rope. The Tower does its work in the background while the child runs in circles. Shade is the catch: there is almost none, one more argument for nine. Leave the tripod behind, too: on that square it gets you noticed.
• The walls of Lucca are just over four kilometres of flat, tree-lined rampart above the city, wide enough for prams, scooters and a balance bike, with ramps up at the bastions so a pram never needs carrying. Horse chestnuts and planes filter the light the whole way round, there are benches every hundred metres, and a cafe on one of the bastions when someone needs to sit down.
• Marina Grande in Sorrento is the old fishermen's beach below the town, not the ferry port at Marina Piccola. Dark sand, painted boats, and the enormous advantage of being somewhere you can put a two-year-old down and let go. The lane down from Piazza della Vittoria is steep and part stepped, so go down in a carrier and leave the pram at the hotel.

Prams, steps, and where not to go

Positano is a staircase with a view. One road switchbacks down; everything else is steps, hundreds between the top of town and the beach. A pram there is not difficult, it is unusable, and carrying one down while also carrying a child is how people hurt their backs on holiday. Capri is the same answer with a ferry attached.

If you want the Amalfi coast with a small child, Ravello is the honest choice. It sits up on the ridge, the main piazza is flat and car-free, children run across it while the adults sit outside the cathedral, and the gardens are a short walk on level-ish ground. The road up is the price: tight switchbacks, and a car-sick child will let you know.

Venice means bridges, and bridges mean steps, so every crossing is a lift and carry. Rome's sampietrini, the little basalt setts, eat any pram with small hard wheels; air tyres are fine. During the shoot a carrier beats a pram anywhere; the pram ends up parked out of frame within five minutes.

What to put in the bag

• Water, wipes and one spare top. Not a whole outfit: a spare top covers ninety per cent of what happens.
• Snacks that do not stain or dye a mouth: crackers, plain biscuits, banana. Keep gelato for minute forty-five, and order a pale flavour, not a red one.
• The comfort object. Keep it in the bag and produce it if things go sideways. If it ends up in a few frames, that is the truth of that year.
• Sun hats, worn between frames and off for portraits: a brim in low morning sun cuts a hard shadow across the eyes.
• Shoes they can run in. A holiday is not the day to break in new sandals.
• No new toy. It pulls the child's attention into their own hands for the rest of the hour.

On clothes: no all-white as a group, no large logos, two or three colours across everyone. Linen creases within ten minutes and looks better for it.

One hour is the right length

For anyone under five, one hour is the correct booking. Genuine cooperation lasts about forty minutes, and the last twenty are where the loose, funny frames come from, once the child has classified the photographer as furniture. Past that you are paying for tiredness.

Session prices are all-in: 279 euro for one hour, 465 for two, 649 for three. Book two hours only for a specific reason: a multi-generation group, two locations you genuinely want, or a baby who will need feeding halfway.

Multi-generation groups

If grandparents are travelling with you, the constraint is standing time and heat, not distance. Choose somewhere to sit within a few metres of where you are shooting. Villa Borghese and the walls of Lucca both pass; the field at Pisa passes at nine and fails at noon.

Shoot the big group first. Saving it for the end is the commonest mistake in family sessions, and it is the picture most likely to be printed. Take it in the first ten minutes while the toddler is still willing, then peel away: grandparents with the grandchildren, each nuclear family, the couple who paid for the trip, then the children alone. By then nobody minds that the toddler is upside down.

For the big frame, seat the grandparents on a bench, a low wall or steps and build the group around them. That solves the standing and the height difference at once, and stops the children being lined up like a school photograph.

What the hour actually looks like

The first ten minutes are warm-up and mostly get deleted: walking, talking, letting the child choose the direction. A photographer who knows small children will not say "smile" or "look at the camera" to a three-year-old, because both produce the same rigid face. They give the adults something to do instead — lifting, chasing, counting steps out loud, walking off and letting the child follow — and photograph the reaction.

If a child hides, ignore them and photograph everyone else. They join within five minutes, every time, because being left out is unbearable. With two under five, stop trying to get both looking at the lens at once. Take them in pairs and singly; the one frame where everybody is looking is luck, not technique.

Work backwards when you plan yours: the ground first, then the hour, then the picture. The family session page is the place to start.

Frequently asked questions

Where in Italy can you do a family photoshoot with a toddler?

Pick somewhere with a floor the child may cross on their own legs rather than a landmark. The best are Villa Borghese in Rome, where the oval of Piazza di Siena is soft dirt and grass; the lawn at Pisa, which puts a great deal of grass between a two-year-old and anything breakable; the four kilometres of flat, tree-lined walls of Lucca, wide enough for prams; and Marina Grande in Sorrento, the old fishermen's beach with dark sand and painted boats.

Why is golden hour a bad idea for photos with small children?

In Rome in mid-June the sun sets around 20:45, so the good evening light runs from roughly 19:45 to 20:40 – dinner, bath, and the precise moment a three-year-old stops being a reasonable person. The window that works under five is the first hour after breakfast, 8:30 to 9:30. Only from late October to February does the warm hour fall after the nap.

Can you bring a pram to a photoshoot in Positano?

No: Positano is a staircase with a view, hundreds of steps between the top of town and the beach, and a pram there is not difficult but unusable; Capri is the same answer with a ferry attached. For the Amalfi coast with a small child, Ravello is the honest choice, with a flat, car-free main piazza. During the shoot a carrier beats a pram anywhere.