Three generations, one sandbank

Grandparents, parents, children, sometimes an aunt who booked late. A multigenerational trip is logistically the most expensive thing a family does, and almost always the one they talk about for the next decade.

It is also the only kind of session where the group photograph genuinely matters more than the candid ones. Here is how to get a good one without losing an hour of your holiday to it.

Do the group frame first, not last

Everybody is tidiest, coolest and most patient in the first ten minutes. Take the formal photograph then — the one that will be printed and framed — and spend the rest of the time letting people drift apart into smaller combinations.

Shoot the pairs nobody thinks to ask for

The whole-family photograph is the one you came for. The photographs you will actually cry at are the smaller ones: a grandmother and a grandchild; two sisters; the couple who have been married forty years, alone, for the first time since the last wedding.

I ask for these explicitly, because families almost never do.

The sandbank is worth the boat

If there is one excursion to spend money on with a large family, it is a private sandbank. No other guests, no furniture, no background to work around — just sand, water and the people you brought. For a group photograph it is the cleanest setting in the country.

Book it for the first or last hour of light. Check whether the tide leaves enough sand at that hour; the resort will know, and the answer changes week to week.

Pace it for the oldest person there

Heat, soft sand and jetties are harder work than they look. Keep the walking short, keep shade within reach, and do not plan anything that requires standing for more than a few minutes at a time. Everybody else will be fine, and the person you planned around will enjoy the whole thing.