The Experience

Prior to your session, we’ll meet for a virtual design consultation to determine the perfect sizing and layout for your home. We’ll also plan outfits and address any questions to make sure your session is perfect! 

On the day of your session, we’ll welcome you to our home studio, where each family member (children, dogs, cats, or any beloved pet) will be beautifully photographed. Studio Sessions will be 15 – 30 minutes long, averaging around 5 minutes per person or animal.

Within a week following your session, we’ll review the images together and help you select your favorites for printing and framing. Your finished portraits will be ready for pickup within 3 to 5 weeks after placing your order.

The Perfect Mother’s Day Gift

This Mother’s Day, celebrate the love and joy of family with custom Family Art Portraits—a meaningful gift that lasts a lifetime. Whether you’re a mom wanting to create cherished artwork for your home, or  looking for the perfect gift to surprise her with, we’ll capture the beauty of your family in a way she’ll treasure forever.

Don’t wait until it’s too late! Sessions must be photographed by April 1st to ensure delivery in time for Mother’s Day. Click the Contact Button above to schedule your consultation, and give the gift of lasting memories.

Common Questions

Do I need to have three kids for this to work?
Not at all! We customize the series to fit your family. To achieve the triptych look, you might include two kids and a pet, two individual portraits of your kids plus one of them together, or even a single child with three different expressions. Parents are welcome to join in, too! There are endless creative possibilities to design the perfect artwork for your home.

Are pets limited to dogs?
Nope! We’re happy to include most pets—dogs, cats, hamsters, and more. Due to space limitations in the studio, larger animals like horses may need to be photographed on location.

Can we include more than three family members?
Absolutely! While we start with a triptych (three panels), we can add as many panels as needed to include everyone. Whether you have four kids or a larger mix of kids and pets, we’ll create a design that beautifully showcases your whole family.

Does this have to be photographed on a white background?
Our studio sessions are all photographed on a white background for a clean, timeless look. However, we’re happy to offer an on-location option for an additional fee.

Can we use pictures we already have?
Because children grow so quickly, we love capturing fresh portraits that reflect their current age. If you have recent images taken by Aaron Watson Photography, we’d be happy to check if they meet the size and style requirements for this artistic series.

Why is only half of the face showing? Is there a full face portrait option?
Absolutely! We offer a variety of styles, including full-face portraits, full-body images, and the signature half-face look seen in our examples. Each option is beautifully and artfully photographed to create stunning artwork for your home.

Are digital images included?

This artwork series is designed specifically for creating stunning pieces for your home. However, we’re happy to provide social media images of any portraits you purchase so you can share them with friends and family. If you’d like to purchase additional portraits beyond those for your walls, we offer a variety of à la carte options, including albums and gift prints.

What is the investment?
The investment for your Family Art Series depends on the size and number of portraits you select for your home. We offer a range of options, and during your consultation, we’ll walk you through the details and help you choose the best fit for your space and budget. Schedule a call, and we’ll walk through the details to create the perfect artwork for your family!

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Capturing the fun and sweet moments you share with your family is so important, and it’s one of the reasons I love reconnecting with familiar faces and meeting new families to photograph. After 20 years of being a family photographer, it’s incredible to see how much everyone has grown and changed over time! From the sweet anticipation of maternity sessions to the tender milestones in our Watch-Me-Grow series, the excitement of senior portraits, and everything in between! I love capturing all moments and every important milestone in life because I know they will become meaningful and lasting memories.

Fall is a beautiful time for family portraits. The vibrant fall colors and stunning mountain views around Charlottesville’s local spots provide a picturesque backdrop that makes each family photo session unique. From the stunning Blue Ridge Mountains views at Hazy Mountain Vineyards and Chiles Peach Orchard, to the the elegant grounds of the University of Virginia, each spot offers a perfect backdrop for capturing fall family photos. The vibrant foliage and stunning mountain views in Charlottesville, VA create an idyllic setting for photographing family sessions.

For families looking to create lasting memories, Charlottesville’s breathtaking fall landscapes offer the perfect setting. As a fall family portrait photographer, it’s a joy to help families capture the essence of this special season, ensuring they have beautiful images to cherish for years to come. I am honored every time I get to photograph families and help make loving memories they will cherish forever.

Interested in pictures with your family this fall, email us! I would love to create beautiful fall portraits for you!

Fall Family Portrait Photographer Photos by Aaron Watson Photography

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Senior photography sessions are all about having fun, enjoying the moment, and highlighting you. High School senior pictures are more than just photographs, they are timeless memories marking a major life milestone. It’s a moment to express pride in who you are and to celebrate all that you have accomplished during your high school journey.

Audrey’s summer senior photo session at Chiles Peach Orchard was amazing. The orchard’s flowers were in full bloom, providing a stunning backdrop that perfectly matched Audrey’s vibrant personality. I always encourage seniors to incorporate their hobbies and passions into their graduation photo sessions. As a dedicated theater student, Audrey’s playful and dynamic expressions added extra fun to her photo session, making amazing, creative senior photos. Her bright personality and lively expressions truly made the high school senior photography session memorable.

For Audrey, her senior photo session was more than just photos for the yearbook, it was about celebrating who she is and creating a timeless portrait for her to proudly hang on the wall alongside her siblings’ senior portraits. There were too many amazing portraits to choose from, so in addition to her beautiful senior wall portrait we created a timeless senior album that her parents will have to cherish as she goes off to college. As a Charlottesville Senior Portrait Photographer, my goal is to create photographs that are not only beautiful, but also meaningful, showcasing each senior in a timeless way that will be enjoyed forever!

Senior Portrait sessions are happening now, so if you are a senior or know a senior who wants amazing senior photos like these be sure to contact me! I would love to create colorful and timeless senior portraits for you!

Charlottesville Senior Portrait Photographer Photos by Aaron Watson Photography

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As one of the best family portrait photographers, it is important to highlight the fun, the silly, and the sweet moments you and your family share. Many of our families I am blessed to see year after year, and it is amazing to see how fast their kids grow and change! It is such an honor capturing all major moments in life. From the anticipation during the maternity session, to the tender moments of newborn portraits, and adorable milestones in our Watch-Me-Grow series, to the excitement of senior portraits, and everything in between. After photographing for 20 years, it is incredible to reflect that some of our families I began photographing with the parent’s wedding, and now their kids are graduating high school!

As we look back at 2023, we had the pleasure of photographing at so many gorgeous Charlottesville locations for the best family portraits. Virginia has some of the most beautiful portrait locations with vibrant seasonal colors that make incredible pictures. Hazy Mountain Vineyards is one of our new favorite spots for family portrait sessions, as it provides unbeatable mountain views and sunsets. The University of Virginia is rich with architecture, beautiful gardens and for many a sentimental value. We love King Family Vineyards for not only great wine, but one of the best vineyard views set amongst the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains. Of course one of the favorites for kids is the local orchards like Chiles Peach Orchard and Carter Mountain, where we not only get great pictures, but the kids get to enjoy special treats! We love photographing family portrait sessions in Charlottesville as there are so many amazing locations, with beautiful views, for creating the best family photos!

Thank you again for honoring us as one of Charlottesville’s best family portrait photographers! If you would like to inquire about a Charlottesville family portrait session with Aaron Watson Photography, please contact us!

All photos by Aaron Watson Photography honored to be named Charlottesville’s Best Family Portrait Photographers

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Senior portraits are more than just photographs; they are timeless memories that encapsulate a pivotal chapter in one’s life. We love that this has become an important tradition for both high school senior portraits, and in recent years, UVA college senior portraits too! Our collection of the best senior portraits from 2023 showcases some incredible locations, fun moments shared with friends, and even an appearance by a local celebrity, UVA Men’s Basketball coach Tony Bennett! You never know who you’ll run into at UVA during your college senior portraits!

For the best senior portrait photographers, spring is a popular time to photograph UVA seniors. The University of Virginia grounds offer a picturesque backdrop for capturing memorable moments set amongst iconic locations like the Rotunda and Lawn. We often encourage friends to join in the session for a few fun pictures of everyone in their cap and gown, plus we love popping a bottle of champagne for a little extra fun celebration! This makes for some of the best graduation photos!

As summer arrives, it is a popular time for rising High school seniors to take advantage of the summer break and schedule a senior photoshoot! We love IX Park, which provides a unique and colorful backdrops that add lots of artistic elements and cool urban vibes to our portraits! Other popular locations like Hazy Mountain, local orchards, and Ravens Roost Overlook, provide breathtaking mountain views for the best senior portrait sessions too!

If you are looking for the best senior portrait photographers for your own senior portrait session, be sure to email us at info@aaronwatsonphoto.com! Congratulations again to all of our seniors on their upcoming graduation!

All photos from Aaron Watson Photography named one of Charlottesville’s Best Senior Portrait Photographers

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For our UVA seniors, we recommend grabbing your cap and gown, inviting a few of your besties, and heading down to the Lawn at UVA for some amazing pictures with the Rotunda, your cap and gown and with a few of your best friends! To make your senior session more fun, bring a few bottles of champagne to shake up with your friends! This makes for the best graduation photo! And, it’s a fun way for you and your friends to celebrate and commemorate your time at UVA together!

As for our Charlottesville high school seniors, consider a senior portrait session at IX Art Park! The art murals here are always changing, which makes for some really unique and colorful backdrops! Let’s personalize your session to show off your personality, interests, and even family pets in your senior portrait sessions! This year, we had a high school include her cat in her senior portraits! That was a first for us! Another senior incorporated his passion for cars with his family’s vintage Chevrolet truck, and of course we love soccer, and enjoyed photographing an awesome senior portrait session on the soccer field at Monticello High School (my own alma-mater)!

We hope you enjoyed browsing through our Best Senior Portraits of 2021! If you’re interested in booking a senior portrait session with Aaron Watson Photography, send us an email at info@aaronwatsonphoto.com for details about our senior portrait photography packages.

Senior portrait session on the Lawn at UVA

Senior portrait session at Castle Hill Cider

Ix Art Park senior portrait session

Charlottesville High School senior portrait session

Charlottesville senior portrait photography by Aaron Watson Photography

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We are incredibly lucky to live in such a beautiful area of Virginia where there are so many gorgeous locations for your Charlottesville family portrait session including some of Charlottesville’s local orchards! Think pretty peach blossoms as the perfect backdrop for your family photos in March, or a spring photo session on the Lawn at UVA (and especially the beautiful UVA gardens). And, of course, a summer portrait session with amazing mountain views along the Blue Ridge Parkway is always a huge hit!

In addition to being Charlottesville family photographers, we are also a full-service design studio! Aaron Watson Photography loves creating gorgeous family portraits for you and your family to enjoy for years to come! We use state-of-the-art software along with pictures of your home, to help you create a beautiful gallery, or one-of-a-kind portrait that you will cherish forever! For families who have too many great pictures to choose, we also love designing a gorgeous album with their top 30 or 50 pictures from their session!

We hope you enjoyed browsing through our Best Family Portraits of 2021! If you didn’t already, be sure to check out part 1 of our best family portrait photography posts! If you would like to book a Charlottesville family portrait session with Aaron Watson Photography, email us at info@aaronwatsonphoto.com!

Charlottesville Family Portrait Photography by Aaron Watson Photography

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This year, we had the pleasure of photographing quite a few maternity and newborn sessions! Our families love the ease of having us come to them to capture those precious moments with their newborn in the comfort of their own home! And, many of our family clients love taking advantage of our Watch-Me-Grow photography package which includes 4 sessions: newborn, 4 months, 8 months, and 1 year. It’s amazing to see how fast children grow from a newborn to a toddler, and we love capturing all those little growth milestones!

2021 also saw us returning to some of our favorite locations for family portraits including Ravens Roost Overlook, Farmington Country Club, Chiles Peach Orchard, Glenmore, and the Lawn at UVA. We also hosted our spring mini sessions again this year featuring baby bunnies, baby chicks, and everyone’s favorite unicorn, [named] Fancy! We hope you enjoy browsing through part one of our Best Family Portrait Photography of 2021 and stay tuned for part two of our Best Family Portraits of 2021 blog post!

Charlottesville Family Portrait Photography by Aaron Watson Photography

To book a family portrait session with Aaron Watson Photography, email us at info@aaronwatsonphoto.com!

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I even had the opportunity last fall to travel to the Washington, D.C. area to photograph former wedding clients turned family portrait clients, as well as visit one of our families in Baltimore for a maternity and newborn session! (Occasionally, we offer family portrait sessions in the DC area. Our DC family portrait sessions are usually held near the National Mall and US Capitol Gardens). If you are interested in a DC family portrait session contact us for our next available portrait dates.

If you’re thinking about planning a family portrait session in the fall, we know all of the best locations for you! Virginia has some of the most beautiful shooting locations, especially for fall family portraits! Some of our top favorite fall portrait locations with gorgeous fall foliage include: Carter Mountain Orchard, Farmington Country Club (for members), Castle Hill Cider, and The Club at Glenmore. And, if you’re looking for that extra wow factor, consider doing your family portraits along the Blue Ridge Parkway at Ravens Roost Overlook. The mountain views there are unbeatable, and it’s absolutely gorgeous there in the fall! The Market at Grelen is another great location, especially if you’re wanting to do holiday family portraits!

We hope you enjoyed browsing through our Best Fall Family Portraits of 2020! You can book your own fall family portrait session by emailing us at info@aaronwatsonphoto.com!

Best Fall Family Portraits of 2020 by Aaron Watson Photography

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If you’re a Class of 2022 senior, now is a great time to start thinking about your senior portraits! Spring and summer break are the perfect times to schedule your High School senior portrait sessions. And for all the UVA seniors out there considering a spring senior portrait session, the University of Virginia campus is absolutely beautiful in the spring (plus you’ll have your cap and gown)! There are so many great spots around campus to photograph your senior portraits, including the lawn, on the Rotunda steps, and in one of the many beautifully manicured campus gardens. We love photographing UVA seniors tossing their cap in the air in front of the Rotunda, or shaking up bottles of celebratory champagne with their best friends, which both make for really great senior photo idea! As for Class of 2022 high school seniors, we find that IX Art Park, Chiles Peach Orchard, and Ravens Roost Overlook along the Blue Ridge Parkway are some of the best high school senior portrait locations! Ix Art Park is a unique location for seniors who want vibrant, colorful murals and an urban backdrop in their photos. Ix Art Park lends it self to some very creative senior portraits! Chiles Peach Orchard and Ravens Roost Overlook are so beautiful in the summertime and fall, allowing us to incorporate gorgeous mountain views into your senior portrait photos!

We hope you enjoy browsing through our Best Senior Portraits of 2020! If you are a UVA or High School senior (or are a parent of a senior) email us at info@aaronwatsonphoto.com to chat more about our senior portrait photography packages.

Senior portrait photography by Aaron Watson Photography

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While Covid made us shift a few things, we were reminded the family portraits are more important than ever as life is fleeting, and the memories and moments we capture are what we’ll always remember with our loved ones! Thankfully after a brief pause, we were able to continue photographing as our best pictures have often been outdoors and from a distance of at least 6 feet!

We are incredibly lucky to live in such a beautiful area of Virginia where there are so many gorgeous locations for family portraits in Charlottesville and the surrounding area. A few of our favorite family portrait locations from 2020 include: the Blue Ridge Parkway (a favorite among our families), Local Orchards and Vineyards, Glenmore and Farmington Country Clubs, and the Market at Grelen (a great location for winter and holiday family portrait sessions)! Four our newborn portraits, we have also loved our shift to in-home portrait sessions where we do a hybrid studio setup along with lifestyle family pictures! Our new families have also loved the ease of having us come to them to capture beautiful moments with their newborn in the comfort of their own home! 

We hope you enjoy browsing through our Best Spring Family Portraits of 2020 below, and keep an eye out for our part two blog post! You can also check out more of our family, maternity & newborn, and senior portrait photography from throughout the years in our collection of best portrait photography.

Spring and summer are wonderful times to schedule your family portrait sessions. To inquire about our available spring and summer family portrait session dates and to book your family portrait session, send us an email at info@aaronwatsonphoto.com!

Best Spring Family Portraits of 2020 by Aaron Watson Photography

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For our Best Family Portraits in Charlottesville we have to have the best locations for our portrait sessions! There’s no shortage of stunning locations for family portrait sessions in Charlottesville; some of our favorite locations include Chiles Peach Orchard, Carter Mountain, Monticello Trail, The Lawn and gardens at UVA, and Ravens Roost on the Blue Ridge Parkway!

As we open our fall schedule this year for family portraits, we are offering all of these great locations again as well as a few extras this year! Our peak fall portrait session dates book up fast, so send us an email at info@aaronwatsonphoto.com to book your session today!

We hope you enjoy looking through our best family photography moments of 2019! Looking for more family portrait inspiration? You can also browse through our past Best Family Portraits as well!

Best Family Portraits by Aaron Watson Photography

We love to also produce beautiful artwork for our families’ homes, to purchase local artwork for your home (and support a good cause) visit: Artwork for A Cause

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With that said, we thought we would celebrate a long overdue post of our favorite and best family portraits of the past year! 2018 really took us on new adventures, and we loved every minute of it. Of course, we had many sessions at some of our favorite places like Carter Mountain, Chiles Peach Orchard, and Raven’s Roost Overlook! The gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains are always a favorite backdrop for our pictures, and a signature look for Charlottesville family portraits! We also love photographing on the UVA Lawn as well. UVA is the perfect setting not only for those who attended the University, but also for those who love great architecture, beautiful gardens in the spring or amazing fall foliage!

Not all of our sessions were in Charlottesville this year. We loved traveling for our family portraits in Charleston, South Carolina, Virginia Beach over the July 4th holiday, and also to Annapolis, Maryland for some super cute maternity and newborn portrait sessions! Destination family portrait sessions are so much fun, and we take it as a huge honor when we our asked by our families to travel so we can capture their precious memories!

From throwing fall leaves in the air, to frolicking through spring gardens, and to loving on those four-legged, furry family members, this past year truly gave us some of the best family portraits we’ve ever taken! We cannot wait to see where the next year takes us, as both photographers and a new family. And, we hope you can be a part of it, too! Contact us to schedule your family portrait session.

The Best Family Portraits of 2018 photographed by Aaron Watson Photography

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We spent one session at Raven’s Roost Overlook and captured some stunning shots! When shooting from the left of the tree, the cliff’s edge looks steep and dramatic. But, when shooting from the right of the tree, we get an entirely different picture that shows the depth going into the valley below. We also visited the IX Art Park, which provides some dynamic backdrops with their many murals and sculptures. This allowed us to be a little more creative, and we had a ton of fun shooting there! When Wyatt asked us for something different for his senior session, we were super excited! We took inspiration from the popular color runs to add a pop of color, and loved the outcome so much we think this might have to make another appearance!

Local places such as Carter Mountain and Chiles Peach Orchard also make great locations for high school senior portraits. Of course, for our college seniors, there is no better place to take pictures than on the grounds of the University of Virginia for their graduation photoshoot. Our UVA seniors love capturing portraits in front of their favorite places, like on the iconic UVA lawn with the Rotunda in the background, or in the beautiful Pavilion gardens! We also love when seniors want to incorporate their hobbies and passions into their graduation portrait sessions, this always makes for a fun and unique session. We always encourage our UVA seniors to include their cap and gown, as what senior doesn’t love having that perfect picture tossing their cap in the air to celebrate their huge accomplishment of graduating?

We are so glad we got to share our best senior portraits from 2018 on the blog with you all. If you’re thinking about getting portraits taken for your high school or college graduation, be sure to schedule your session with us soon!

Charlottesville Senior Portrait Photographers: Aaron Watson Photography

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