Photographs your kids will actually love
REAL KIDS, REAL LIGHT, REAL MOMENTS
What you get
Tiny Voyager Studio
S.01About
The name came from my nephew, who called himself a tiny voyager at the grocery store.
By 2020 the studio had grown enough that Grace was turning away bookings, and in spring 2021 she signed a lease on a dedicated studio space two blocks from the Astoria Park waterfront. The space has north-facing windows that run floor to ceiling, which means she almost never needs artificial light indoors. She shoots primarily on a Sony mirrorless system but keeps a Fujifilm X100V in her bag for the candid frames that happen between setups. The editing style leans toward natural tones with a slight warmth in the shadows, which she has kept consistent since the first year.
About▶S.03What you get
Sessions
From $550
S.04How a session actually works
- You pick the location
- Sessions run loose
- Turnaround in ten days
Studio, your backyard, a favorite park, or a Brooklyn rooftop. Grace scouts every outdoor spot in advance.
Recent writing
The best parks for family photos in Queens, NYC
Queens has more usable outdoor photography locations than most people give it credit for. Grace has been shooting in the borough since 2018 and has strong opinions about which parks work for which kinds of sessions. Here is the honest breakdown.
Read more →What actually happens during a 90-minute family session
Ninety minutes sounds like a long time until you are standing in a park with two kids who have decided they are done cooperating. Grace has structured the full family session specifically to work around that reality. Here is how the time actually gets used.
Read more →How to actually prepare your kids for a photo session
The single most common thing Grace hears from parents in the first five minutes of a session is: 'She was so excited this morning and now she won't look at the camera.' It happens constantly, and it is almost never the child's fault. Here is what actually helps.
Read more →Grace Marsden
Grace Marsden picked up her first film camera at sixteen, shooting her younger siblings in the backyard of her family's house in Naperville, Illinois. After studying visual arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she spent four years second-shooting weddings for a busy studio in Chicago before deciding that the subjects she really wanted to photograph were the ones who couldn't sit still for more than thirty seconds. She launched Tiny Voyager Studio in 2018 out of a converted spare bedroom in Astoria, Queens, and moved into her current light-filled studio space in 2021. On weekends she volunteers at a community darkroom in Long Island City, where she still develops the occasional roll of 35mm just to keep herself honest.