This is one of my favorite activities to facilitate during young family portrait sessions. It's called airplane: each parent lifts a child into the air using their legs to hold them up and their arms to stabilize them. The physical engagement, the trust required, the novelty of the position—it always results in squeals of laughter from children and genuine smiles from parents proud of their strength and coordination.
The airplane game succeeds because it's simultaneously structured and spontaneous. I can direct the basic activity—"let's play airplane on the bed"—giving families clear instruction. But the laughter, expressions, and energy that emerge are completely authentic. Children genuinely delight in being lifted, parents genuinely enjoy their kids' joy, and the resulting images capture real emotion rather than manufactured smiles.
Toronto professional family portraits by Storey Wilkins Photography look natural, thoughtful, and emotional. This image may have been taken during a professional session, but it has an organic feeling—like they just happened to have a picture taken during play time that really represents them. This is the goal: editorial quality that doesn't sacrifice authenticity for polish.
The bed provides ideal location for the airplane game: soft landing if anyone tips, elevated platform that improves lighting, familiar comfortable space, and large enough surface for the whole family. Parents feel secure lifting children on the forgiving surface, and the bedroom setting adds intimate, at-home authenticity that studio sessions cannot replicate.
Those squeals—pure, unfiltered, joyful noise—accompany the best family photographs. You can almost hear them looking at this image. That auditory memory embedded in visual documentation creates powerful connections. Years later, parents will look at this photograph and remember not just how everyone looked, but how the moment sounded, felt, and moved.
The organic feeling comes from capturing activity mid-motion rather than posing statically. Bodies are engaged physically, faces show genuine reaction to what's happening, and the composition feels dynamic rather than arranged. Professional skill lies in directing activity that generates authentic moments, then capturing those moments with technical excellence.
Great family photography doesn't just document appearance—it represents character, dynamics, and relationships. This airplane game image represents a family that plays together, trusts each other physically, values laughter, and creates joy intentionally. It shows parental engagement, sibling experience, and collective family energy in ways that traditional posed portraits cannot.
This approach exemplifies at-home day-in-the-life family portrait lifestyle photography—using the family's own bedroom and bed, directing activities they might actually play (or could imagine playing), and documenting the resulting authentic interaction with editorial quality. It's professional photography that honors real family life rather than replacing it with artificial scenarios.
Young families—with children still small enough to lift safely—benefit particularly from active play-based photography. The kids have energy to burn, parents are physically capable of games like airplane, and everyone benefits from structured activities that channel natural exuberance into photogenic moments filled with genuine laughter.
Location: Cabbagetown, Toronto.
Keywords: casual (21), family (58), fun (30), indoor (31), summer (18). 1/400; f/2.0; ISO 1600; 50.0 mm.