What is “Lifestyle Photography?” Photographer Lingo, Explained

Sometimes people ask me what I do for work and I answer, “I’m a lifestyle newborn, maternity, and family photographer.” They might ask a follow-up question about a studio and I’ll tell them I don’t have a studio, that I do lifestyle photography at clients’ homes or around Richmond instead. Sometimes I get very polite nods and then very quick topic changes in response, and I’ve come to realize that “lifestyle photography” might need further definition.

What exactly is lifestyle photography? Photographers like to throw lingo and industry jargon around, but we forget that the average non-photography person might not have a firm grasp of what lifestyle photography is. The vagueness of the phrase might prompt other images to pop into your head, like “lifestyles of the rich and famous” or “lifestyle magazines,” along with photos that are perfectly staged for ads and commercials. It might make you want to speak in a snobby British accent. It might make you think of perfectly curated homes, lawns, and gardens.

Lifestyle photography is none of that, though. Lifestyle photography is lightly-directed photography, just slightly more directed than documentary style photography. While documentary photography is completely hands-off and simply documents the scene as it is (hence the easy to remember name), a lifestyle photography session includes some light instruction from your photographer.

Lifestyle photography is not heavily posed or curated. We use the phrase “lifestyle newborn photography” as kind of an opposite genre to studio-based newborn photography, where babies are heavily posed and composite imagery is used to create adorable, yet fabricated, scenes, in editing software after the session. Composite imagery means taking two or more images and putting them together to create one complete image, and is necessary for posed newborn photography, for safety’s sake.

Lifestyle newborn photography is also called natural, authentic, or at-home newborn photography. At a typical lifestyle newborn session, I’ll make direct family members on where to stand or sit based on the light in the room. I’ll give suggestions for activities or ways to hold your newborn so that we can get great photos. But you’re the one holding the baby, and the images we make are real, the connection is real, the emotions are real.

Lifestyle photography can be done at home or outdoors, and I’ve even seen some photographers set up a studio with a fake scene to let families come and do “lifestyle” photography there - though that feels a little less natural and authentic, in my opinion.

I use prompts to direct family members for lifestyle sessions, and often resort to awkward humor to get clients to relax at the beginning of a session. “Act like you like each other” is a go-to prompt for me, and it often makes two people who love each other very much actually LOOK like they love each other very much, and act more like they do in the real world, when a camera is not pointed at them.

The most posing I usually do is during maternity sessions, especially for a first baby. The combination of “new body, who dis” with nervous adults, without a baby or toddler around to break the ice, can make adults freeze up at the beginning of a session. Posing and heavy direction can help break up some of that tension as we get to know each other, before conversation gets going and trust develops. But as your family grows and you get more distracted by the needs of the littles around you, I often like to quiet down, step back, and allow the scene to develop naturally as your family interacts and connects with each other.

So basically, that’s it. I wrote “lifestyle photography” so many times above that it made me forget what lifestyle photography was really about for a minute. But for me, it’s all about real, authentic photography with very little instruction or posing, focused on the connections that you have together as a family.