Nashville family photos, minus the stiff part.
Not the stiff one where everyone's told to say cheese and no one looks like themselves. Five fast, low-pressure minutes. Even the squirmy ones make it through, and you walk away with the frame that becomes the one on the wall for the next decade. The kids change so fast. This is how you keep this version of them.
No matching outfits required. No meltdown guaranteed, but we move quick for a reason.
Put anything behind you. Including a beach.
Two hundred-plus backdrops is the headline, but the more useful fact is that it isn’t a menu you’re stuck choosing from. The wall is a screen. If you want your family on a beach in the middle of February, you get a beach. No flights, no sand, no waiting for the light to cooperate. Same for a mountain, a city street, a library, a solid color that happens to match your living room wall. People come in expecting to pick from options and leave realizing they could have asked for anything.
That also means you’re not committing to one look. Do the classic everyone-in-a-row shot, then the beach, then something the kids choose. Same sitting, no relocating, no praying the weather holds. Props are welcome and genuinely encouraged; the ridiculous hat usually earns its place.
Christmas card photos, captured in five minutes
The holiday card is the reason a lot of families finally book something, and it’s usually the most stressful photo of the year, coordinating a Saturday, hoping for decent weather in November, hoping nobody’s sick. Here it’s a walk-in. Put a snowy field, a fireplace, a tree, or a plain festive color behind you, shoot it in sixty seconds, and have the files the same day. If you want a few different backgrounds so you can decide later which one becomes the card, that costs you nothing extra in time. It’s the same session.
Why we shoot fast
5 to 10 minutes. That’s the actual shooting window, and it’s the whole reason this works with kids. Nobody holds a smile through a forty-minute session in a field. There’s no golden hour to race, no drive across town, no toddler hitting the wall twenty minutes in. By the time your three-year-old works out that something is happening, we’re done and you’re looking at the results. Ages three and up tend to go smoothly. Younger than that is a coin flip, and we’ll tell you honestly if it isn’t working.
Up to eight of you in the frame
Eight is the ceiling, set by the width of the LED wall rather than by us. That covers most of what comes through: two parents and three kids, grandparents visiting from out of state, or the whole extended group while everyone’s finally in the same city. If you’re bigger than eight, we can split you into overlapping groups and you’ll still leave with something that works.
What it costs
The session is free. You walk in, we shoot, and about a hundred frames land in your inbox, then you decide. One favorite is $99, five images are $249, and $499 takes everything from the shoot. Nothing to commit to beforehand, and no obligation if nothing grabs you.
Where to find us in Franklin
The Portrait Lab is inside The Factory at Franklin, at 230 Franklin Road, Suite 11BB, Franklin, TN 37064, about twenty minutes south of downtown Nashville. Parking is free, which matters when you’re unloading a car full of kids. The Factory has coffee and restaurants under the same roof, so plenty of families make a morning of it rather than treating the portrait as an errand.
