Episode 005: My Big Hot Take On Family Mini Sessions (and why I plan to stop offering them in my business)
Hey, hi, hello, and welcome to this, the fifth episode of the Kelsi Bailey Photography Podcast. I am pretty jazzed. Today, I am dropping a new segment here on the podcast and I have very creatively named it the Hot Take Series. So as you probably already inferred, as it is heavily implied, the Hot Take Series is simply a series where I will pop on from time to time and I will drop a hot take on something that is relevant at the time of recording to business or motherhood or life in general. And I cannot think of anything more relevant in the month of November as a family photographer than dropping a hot take on family mini sessions.
Family mini sessions are a really popular offering, both for photographers to offer and for clients to book. And I have offered these in my business before and we are going to dive in. We are going to talk all about those later. But before I dive in too deep, I wanted to drop in this disclaimer and I wanted it to be loud and clear right at the top of the episode so that once we dive in, we are all on the same page. My disclaimer is this: with the recording of this episode, I want to remind you that these are all of my personal thoughts and my personal opinions. They are in no way intended to offend anyone. I also am not passing judgment on anyone either.
If you are a photographer and you offer family mini sessions as a part of your business and they are working for you right now in the season of business that you’re in, I applaud you. And if they continue to serve and work for you and your business, I encourage you to continue to offer them. I would challenge you, though, to run an audit on your family mini session offerings every year and make sure that the structure with which you offer them is still serving you in your business. That’s my challenge to you.
If you are a client who prefers mini sessions to full sessions, I’m not here to judge you either. I do, however, like my photographer friends, I want to challenge you to lean into the why that is, why you prefer mini sessions to full sessions. Because I think, again, my own personal opinion, I think if you really leaned into the why, I think you would prefer mini sessions for the lower price point and not necessarily the mini session experience. So I just challenge you to lean into that while you’re listening.
I hope now that I’ve laid out this disclaimer that I’m not looking to offend anyone, I’m also not actively judging anyone while I share my thoughts and my opinions. But hopefully this will allow you to just sit back, relax, and if nothing else, I can just shed some light perhaps on mini sessions from either perspective.
So I don’t know about you, but I’ve got hot coffee in my mug finally. It is chilly here in the Midwest, so my hot coffee is in my mug and I’m raising it to you. Cheers. Let’s jump into today’s episode.
Family mini sessions. First of all, what exactly is a family mini session? They are almost exactly what they sound like. They are a mini, kind of bite-sized session, photo session for your family. And while they vary from photographer to photographer, I think I can make an umbrella blanket statement that can kind of encompass the general idea of what you can expect with a family mini session.
I think if you book one, you can expect them to take anywhere between 10 to 20 minutes in length. I think you can expect to receive anywhere between 5 to maybe 15 or 20 digital images. You might receive some prints depending on the photographer’s package that they’re offering. You might do your family mini session outside. Photographers might host them at a local park or a Christmas tree farm. Some photographers might opt to offer their family mini sessions in their studio. Sometimes they can be themed. Think like:
- Christmas family mini session
- Autumn family mini session
- Easter family mini session
Any of those things. And if you think about a theme, it likely has props or a backdrop to reflect the theme that you’re going for. So, again, as an umbrella statement, as a whole, I think if you book a family mini session, you can expect them to take 10 to 20 minutes in length,receive about 10 to 15 or 20 digital images. Maybe you’re inside. Maybe you’re outside. Maybe you’re receiving prints. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s a digital only type experience. And the one thing I can say for certain about family mini sessions is that they are likely to come in at a lower price point. So that can be enticing both as a client, and it can be enticing for photographers as well.I have offered family mini sessions three different times in my business. And the three times that I have offered them, I have walked away and said, “Never again. I will not offer family mini sessions again.” I learned something different in the three times that I have offered them. And I’m going to walk through all of those things so that you can walk through them with me and see them from my perspective.
While we walk through these things, I want to remind you that I am talking specifically about family mini sessions. I’m not talking about motherhood mini sessions. I’m not talking about personality portrait mini sessions. I’m not talking about headshot minis or Easter minis or back to school minis or milestone minis. I’m talking specifically here about family mini sessions.
So the first time that I offered family mini sessions was November of 2015. Remember, my business started in 2013. And by November of 2015, I had built up a bit of a clientele. I was excited to offer mini sessions because I had had my oldest daughter, Harper, in August of 2015. So I had had her at the end of the summer. Looking into the fall season, I knew that I wanted to have something to offer my families. I felt mini sessions would be a good fit because the way that I saw it at the time is that I could leave my house, photograph and serve many families at one time. And then perhaps maybe hypothetically, the rest of my fall season would be less hustly, less bustly, less crazy. And so I offered these family mini sessions at our local Christmas tree farm. I would be lying if I said I did not love them. I did love them. I loved the Christmas tree farm vibe. I loved the ability to serve many families in a smaller amount of time. I blocked a weekend off for these minis. So I had a session, well, I had a block of time set aside for Saturday and then a block of time set aside where our sessions were offered on Sunday. And again, in my head, I thought, “I’ll just work this one really long weekend. And then the rest of my autumn season will be easy peasy because I’ll have served all of these families in just this one weekend.” And it worked out a little bit that way. I did luckily book them all up. I would say probably half of the people that booked were return clients and half of them were new to me clients. I went on that Saturday and I started the mini sessions and I’m loving them. I was sitting in the car pumping because I had to work that into the schedule since, you know, Harper was just a wee little baby. And so I’m pumping in the car. And for the first time, I saw family mini sessions through the lens of a mother and not a photographer. When I started thinking about it, I really did not like the way that it made me feel. And here’s what I mean by that. I was like in awe of all of these moms who had all their kiddos out kind of in their Christmassy best because we were at the Christmas tree farm. They were in it to win it. They were on time. They did the session. They went home. And I thought, you know what? Those moms, though, are doing the same amount of work. Whether they booked a full family session or a mini family session, they’re still doing the same amount of work. They’re booking the session, coordinating the outfits, getting the family to and from the session. And then once their gallery is delivered, they’re only reaping like half of the reward for all of the work and the energy and the time that they had poured into the session. And I felt really icky about that.
Now, I still had half of my mini sessions to shoot that Saturday and then a full day of mini sessions. Not a full day, another block of time scheduled out on Sunday for the mini sessions that I had booked. So I’m trying to like hype myself back up. Kelsi, we’re not Kelsi the mom. Today we’re thinking Kelsi the photographer, Kelsi the business owner. And so I said, you know, we’re going to push the mom stuff aside. We’re going to comethrough it again with the lens of a photographer. And I’ll tell you, when I started to think of it as a photographer, it all kind of dawned on me again. My young family, like I would if I were going out to shoot a full family session, I’m leaving my family, I’m away from home, I’m still doing all of the correspondence to book the sessions, all the confirmation, all of that correspondence before and after the session is still happening. I’m still doing the sessions themselves, and then when I get home, I’m still editing and delivering all of those galleries. And it hit me a little bit like a ton of bricks that just because it says mini session doesn’t mean that I’m doing a mini amount of work. And I am only at that point also reaping like half of the reward, like the moms are, because the mini sessions come in at a lower price point. And so I had this realization during my first set of family mini sessions ever, and I just really did not like the way that that made me feel .And so I didn’t like the feeling from a mom perspective, I did not like the feeling from the photographer perspective. So I did them though, obviously, I did the mini sessions, I delivered them all. And then I thought next year I’m not going to offer these. I’m going to see what happens. I’m going to see if my return clients still return to me if I don’t offer the mini sessions. And I’m going to see if any of these new to me clients, if they become a return client the following year.And it was interesting because none of the clients who came to me for the first time during those family mini sessions in November of 2015, about half of them I have not seen again. I don’t know if it was because it was convenient for them at the time they saw it on Facebook advertised as a family mini session and they just happened to see it and liked my work and booked it for that reason. I don’t know if it was the price point. I don’t know if it was the location. I can’t speak to why none of them came back. Maybe they just didn’t like their photos. I don’t know. But I was really happy the following year then that I did not offer them because then when I was leaving my house, I was leaving for a full family session. I was delivering a full family session and I felt much better about that.
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So fast forward a few years and I, let’s see, when I acquired my studio space in O’Fallon, that was the next time that I offered family mini sessions. And it was only because I had acquired the studio space in the late fall season, like October-ish. And I thought I would love to introduce people to the space and I would love the opportunity to serve some of my families who have voiced interest in mini sessions, but I’ve not, you know, offered them in a while.So I offered them, I think that was in 2021 that I offered them in the studio. They were Christmas themed. I had a big giant Christmas wreath and some Christmas trees. And so I offered them at the time I had a family membership package going on, which is another conversation for a whole other episode. But therefore I had a block of time set aside for my family membership families to come in and do the mini session. It was included as part of their membership. And then I also opened a little block for some of my regular return clients if they wanted to book a mini session there as well. So those actually, they turned out fine. I enjoyed doing them. The thing though that I did not like about those is that I met a couple of new families who booked for those family mini sessions and I did not like delivering a new family that kind of rushed experience. I was meeting them literally for the first time when they came upstairs to the studio. There was no warmup time for that. There’s no getting to know their kids. There’s no getting to know them. It was just, they came upstairs. Hi, I’m Kelsi. Hi, we’re so-and-so. And then you go through the session. And then there’s no time in the end to follow up and chat. It’s just you get in, you get out, and then they’re done. And I, like, lost sleep those nights because I felt like I was doing them a disservice by giving them such a rushed mini session experience. So again, after 2021, I said, no, remember, those mini sessions didn’t work for you in 2015. They didn’t work for you very well in 2021. We are done with those. So I put them on the back shelf.
They have not been a part of my business.And then, of course, last year, there were some voices trickling in, you know, do you offer any mini sessions? There’s a lot of emails that come in, particularly in the month of November that are something like, we completely dropped the ball. We still need to get some family photos done. We don’t have any time on our calendar. Do you have mini sessions going on that we could sneak into?And so I thought, OK, last summer when I was getting my autumn calendar all good to go, getting all of that figured out, I thought, OK, I will toss out some mini sessions again and see how it goes. What I did this time, though, was a little bit different. My mini sessions were only $25 less than the full family session. I offered more things. So I offered prints and holiday cards as part of the mini sessions. And so they were not as much as a full family session, but they were not much less expensive either. And I put all of those things out there to the world in July and August. And I had one family. You guys, I had one family who looked between the full family session and the mini family session. I had one family who booked the mini session. So again, I thought to myself, well, those voices that I was hearing, they were not meant to be a part of my business because the people who were meant to come and find my business were not interested in mini sessions. They were interested in the full family session experience. And so I think it is safe to say now at this point here at the end of 2025 that I don’t think family mini sessions are going to be something that I offer in my business. Given those three times that I did offer them, here’s what I learned and here is why I decided they were not a good fit for me and that I really don’t think at the end of the day they’re a great fit for you guys, my clients as well.
I mentioned this a little bit when I talked about my mini sessions in November of 2015. I did not like that both you guys as the client and me as the photographer that we were putting the same effort forward. We were still going through the same motions, doing the same planning, and then only reaping half of the reward. As a mom, it would be frustrating and a little disappointing to me if I scheduled a session, I got my family all outfitted, all ready to go. If it took me longer to drive to the session than it did to conduct the session, that to me would not be worth my while. I would not like to only receive five images from that session, not after I’ve done all of that work.And so I don’t like the thought of doing that to you, of making you guys go through all of those motions and then only receiving, reaping half of those rewards. It just, oh, it makes me feel so icky. And I know that you guys must share that same sentiment with me because I put mini sessions out this year and you guys didn’t book them.And I’m not, I’m not, I’m not blaming you. I’m not saying, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I put these mini sessions out and nobody booked them. No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying in fact, the opposite, that I found it really refreshing to find that we are all on the same page, that we are all looking to have the same experience.
From the photographer perspective, I learned the hard way that mini sessions don’t equal mini work. It is the same amount of work. It’s the same quality of work. And all you’re doing is just delivering a smaller gallery. And again, I just don’t like to offer that type of experience. So that feels icky to me personally.I also do not love how rushed the mini sessions are. When I did them in the studio and I met two new families, I really did not feel like I had my best foot forward when I was rushing them in and out of the studio. I did not like that at all. And as far as return clients go for mini sessions, the devil’s advocate, I know, and I know some of you are thinking it right now, and you’re thinking my kids, my toddlers, they don’t have a long attention span. Or my 13-year-old literally wants nothing to do with getting family photos done. So the faster we can get through them, the better off we’re going to be. And I’m going to argue that that is a really big risk. When you are bringing your toddler to a mini session, if there is a meltdown, there is no recovering from a meltdown during a mini session. During a full family session, yes, there is time to ride the meltdown. There’s time to calm down from the meltdown, reset, start over and still have a successful session. If you are in a mini session setting and you are seven minutes into your 10 minute mini session and your toddler melts down, that’s it. You’re done. Your whole mini session is toast. I don’t love that either, obviously. And I have had in the past, I have had kiddos of all ages, not just toddlers. I have had kiddos that have had meltdowns or they’ve had really big feelings or, you know, X, Y, Z. And that interrupts the mini session and then it just has a bitter ending because there’s nothing you can do. They’re all booked back to back to back. And so if there is a meltdown, that’s it. It’s over and it’s done and there is no recovering from that. And so the rushed experience is not my favorite experience. And I think the kids can feel that anxiety as much as we do as moms and as much as I do as a photographer. It is a lot of mental work as a photographer to keep those mini sessions running smoothly. And there’s no time for creativity. You’re doing the same poses with the same backdrop with every single family that comes in. And I just think that you guys deserve a little bit better than that. So that the rushed experience is just not for me. And so I do not like offering those to you.
I also think it is unfair and this might be my hottest take of all when it comes to mini sessions is that it is not fair for me to charge a less amount of money. If I charge a client $200 in the month of November because it’s November, because it’s a mini session, because it’s a Christmas family mini or whatever, I can’t expect that same family to come and pay me for a full priced session in June. I just don’t think that that’s fair. I know that it’s only a mini session and I’m only delivering a smaller gallery, but from a consumer perspective, if I know that every year I can get something that is high quality, that I love, that I can count on, if I can get that for $200 during the month of November, I have no incentive to book it at any other time of the year.And so as a business owner, I have to be thinking profit first and I’m thinking it’s just not fair to have families come in and pay $200 in November and then have families in January then that come and pay my full session price. That’s just not fair. I can’t expect my clients to do that. I can’t expect them to book in February if they’ve just done a mini session in November and paid a third of the cost. It just doesn’t make sense to me from a business perspective.So that’s why this year when I offered them, I offered them at almost the same price point as my full family sessions because I just don’t see the value in delivering a smaller gallery and only receiving a smaller amount of money on my end because it’s my same quality of work. I’m still leaving my family to photograph the session. It’s my time and my talent when I’m editing and delivering the images. And so I don’t like to charge a small amount of money for the same quality of work.So what I do instead, and I have done this for years and years and years, what I do instead is I offer a $100 discount off of my family autumn sessions in the months of October and November. These sessions do have a little bit of a stipulation:
They are all outside at handpicked locations.
They are not in-home sessions.
They are not sessions out at your family’s farm, etc.
But I love that. I love that I can meet you where you are. I love that I feel like I can give you a little bit of a discount, a break, a treat on your family session while still offering the same experience and delivering the same gallery. And that makes me feel good. I feel like that works for me in my business.And so if you are currently a photographer and youare drowning in family mini sessions, please take that piece of advice, take that tip and run with it and make it work for your business because I promise you don’t have to offer family mini sessions to have a successful photography business. I know that they do not work for me in my business and that’s okay. And so that’s like I said, why I’m happy to offer a discounted session in the months of October and November so that we can have the best of both worlds. My clients who I love can get a little bit of a break on the price and I can go out and play in all the fall foliage with all of my families and everyone wins. And I love the way that that serves me in my business. And I love how it serves you, the client also.Now with all of that being said, let’s circle back to something that I said earlier, which was that this is all with regard specifically to family mini sessions. So do not hear or mistake this podcast for me writing off all mini sessions forever and ever. Amen. No, this is just family mini sessions that I am no longer offering as a part of my business. In fact, I have lots of mini session ideas up my sleeve for 2026 and I’m really excited about all of those mini sessions. So don’t panic if you’re listening thinking, oh my gosh, Kelsi’s never going to offer mini sessions again. No, not true. I actually plan to probably offer more mini sessions than I ever have before in the years to come, just not specifically family mini sessions. I think those have a different place and a different time on my calendar and on yours. And so I just don’t feel like they serve my business and I don’t think that they serve you either. But I do think there is a time and a place for mini sessions and I am excited to talk about those in an upcoming episode.
And there you have it. That is my hot take on family mini sessions. I have tried them in my business. You guys were there. You walked through them all with me. I don’t think it would be fair to say that I tried and I failed. I also don’t think it would be fair to say that I tried and succeeded. Instead, I think the best way to put it is that I tried it on in my business and then it just didn’t fit. It didn’t fit me or my business and that’s okay. Again, I am just sharing my own thoughts, my own opinions. I am not trying to offend anyone. I am also not judging you again if you’re a photographer and you’re offering mini sessions, family mini sessions and they’re serving you, that’s great. Keep doing that as long as they’re serving you. If you’re a client who prefers mini sessions to full sessions, maybe this will just give you something to think about the next time that you’re in the market for family photos.
Okay, lovelies, that’s a wrap on our chat for today. Thank you for allowing me to zip into your earbuds. I know your time is valuable and I’m so grateful that you chose to spend some of it chatting with me. I hope you’re walking away with a smile and maybe a bit of inspiration too. To revisit today’s discussion, you can head to kelsibailey.com slash podcast for show notes and discount codes from today’s sponsors. If you’ve enjoyed our conversation, I would be honored if you leave a review, subscribe to the show or share this episode with a friend. Now go give those you love an extra snuggle, may your coffee cup be bottomless, and I’ll meet you right back here in the next episode of the Kelsi Bailey Photography Podcast.
