New Baby, New Portraits, Same Happy Smile

As I've often said, I just love it when families return to update their family portraits. It is always lovely to catch up with the goings on of their lives, meet the new members and see how the older ones have grown.

In this case the family of 3 have now become 4, adding a new baby girl to the mix. And what makes this family a little different is that each time they've chosen to come for portraits their babies have been at the sitting stage, which I quite like for a nice change. Here we can focus on expressions but luckily still have a somewhat immobile child. This little beauty was on the verge of crawling but still too slow to get away from me, my camera and the lights.

She was full of smiles and so easy to photograph, not unlike her big sister at the same age. In fact, her big sister was possibly one of the happiest babies I've ever photographed and I even called her so in my blog post about her session a couple of years ago. This little one wasn't really any different when it came to smiling. Click here to see big sister's session.

We used the balloons again. I love the colours it adds and the enthusiasm it brings with the children. They all seem to love balloons and I feel they really add something to their portraits. When we are finished I let the children take them home with them which as you can imagine they love.

This family brought their own prop too which is something I love and highly encourage. Its nice to add something that is personal to the portraits. In this case this family have a farm and adult sized quad bikes in addition to this lovely little toy one and it provides an important memory, particularly for Dad. It also provides something that amused this little girl which of course helped in getting happy portraits. Not that she really needed much help.

And while we were at it we updated their family group portrait. Unfortunately by the time we had finished getting what we needed of the girls they had had enough and we weren't getting the best from them for the family portraits. So rather than stress everyone out pushing to complete we simply arranged a different date. But to save on trips to the studio though, the family portraits were taken on the same day as the viewing. Its not necessarily ideal however it made things much more convenient for the family having to make just the 2 trips rather than 3 and the children were much happier which was most important. I would always much rather arrange a second session than force a child to sit still when they've just had enough.

I look forward to catching up with this family again soon, although I am told its not likely to be for a third child. You just never know though. I've suggested some lovely ballerina portraits in a couple of years along with an updated family portrait anyway.

If this type of session is of interest to you please get in touch. To contact us or book a session you can either ring us on 01455 611069, follow this link to our contact us page on our website, or send us a message via our Facebook page here. We look forward to hearing from you.

Comments

London in Spring, Whats Not to Love?

Well I know there is still a lot not to love but I'm choosing to see the great things about London at the moment. I am having a ball this year visiting London as often as I can. Which is unusual for me since I usually prefer the comfort of my own home, in rural old Leicestershire. Staying home and avoiding people has always been the easy option. But this year, possibly due to the wonderful weather we keep having, has me longing for venturing out. Again, just like my last trip, I headed out with my good friend Panikos Hajistilly . Living in North London he finds it easy to meet up for our shoots. This time though I had more of an idea of the sights I wanted to use as the backdrops for my portraits. With it being spring I was in search of colour, preferably flowers. Admittedly. I didn't quite get what I was looking for. The white fronted terraced houses with pink magnolia trees we did not find unfortunately. But I did make it to Peggy Porchen's which was a must see on m...

Portraits of a Newborn Baby Girl and Her Family

Its always so nice when a family return to have their latest addition photographed in the same way as their first child. Its a great feeling knowing they cherished my work so much the first time that they want to come back to continue the tradition. I also love it when I'm given permission to share the portraits I've created. Its not often that I'm asked not to share but I never take this opportunity for granted because I know how sensitive people can be about sharing personal moments. And I'm especially grateful here for being allowed to share some of the more intimate ones. Although I always ask permission to share the standard stuff I create, I always make it known that I am fine with and fully understand if there are any private portraits that should remain so. In this case I was given full permission to share everything and I'm so pleased to get the chance to show some of the other work we can do for families. I really love how skin tones turn out ...

Baby Frankie

Well I suppose its about time I got back to blogging. I used to love writing blogs and was always thrilled to post them so I could get some feedback. But I drifted away from blogging and have found it difficult to return. Since I've been rather busy lately I thought I'd take the opportunity to share over these next few weeks all that I've been up to. I've had some great sessions with babies, families and even adults. And even did some product work, cremation jewelry believe it or not. And now, today, the school portraits season has begun. So I will be very busy over these next few months but that should provide me with loads to share. I thought I'd kick off the blogging with some work for a returning client with their latest addition to the family, Frankie. They did as advised and came over for a session when Frankie was about 2 weeks old. Ideally between 10-14 days is great. In fact they ...

Never Work With Children or Animals

Or so the saying goes. But I have to say that working with dogs has been so lovely. They have been almost entirely a dream to work with. I say almost entirely because we have had a few moments where a dog has needed to settle. And one moment where the dog had settled but one of my cats decided to have a look through the glass door which, as you can imagine, rather quickly unsettled the dog. Still, that didn't stop us from creating incredible work. In fact it was during that shoot with the cat instance when I created two of my favourite pieces, shown below. (It was while sitting on the couch here when he noticed the cat peering through the curtain) I don't know if I've just been lucky or all dogs are just easy to work with. I photographed a french bull dog puppy and I thought that would be tough as he hadn't had time to be properly trained yet. But he did everything we wanted in no time at all. And this included the props we used here (below), which to me...

My Work Experience Week by Hester Sharpe

A week in the life of a Photographers assistant, is not all about saying cheese! I’m Hester Sharpe, currently at JCC but took a week out of normal school life on work experience to be a photographer’s assistant and learn the bits behind the camera, photograph and the process to get to the end result. During my week of work experience in photography I have learnt that there is a lot more than just taking the pictures and printing them. The steps in between are the key to getting the perfect photo. For example the photos have to be cropped, tweaked, edited, colour corrected. That is just a taste I have had in the processing of the photos and there is a lot more than just those things. Those processes are the most time consuming part of the photograph and a tremendous amount of detail is put in to the picture but all the hours spent are paid off with the end result; a perfect picture. It isn’t just how the picture looks; presentation is a key to photography too. Selecting the best ...

Christina Lauder Portraits

Search This Blog