Christina Lauder Portraits

I just love spending time with such young babies. They are so lovely and tiny and so much easier to work with when creating baby portraits of very young babies. Until they are old enough to hold their head, make eye contact and intentionally smile it is easiest and most attractive to photograph them as very young newborns. This is the stage when we can photograph them looking peaceful and sweet while they sleep. And they do so much of this at this age that it only makes sense we capture it in a beautiful portrait to be treasured for a lifetime. In order to do this it does take some planning on the parents part. The parents of this little girl came in for a consultation a few months ago so they could see what is on offer and I was able to tell them that they need to ring me as soon as baby is born so we can fit them in while baby is less than 2 weeks old. We can do older than this but its harder work and sometimes baby just won't stay asleep long enough to get all that we...

9 years ago I helped change the look of the school portrait throughout the UK. I left the blue mottled background behind and introduced a contemporary white replacement which at the time was a welcomed change. Since then I've seen most other school photographers follow suit. I know the blue background lasted decades. I for one had that same background in my own school photos right from 1975 when I started school (maybe I shouldn't be sharing that). I don't feel that society accepts or expects a lack of change anymore. We all want everything to move with the times and the times move much faster these days. So is 9 years enough for school photos to remain the same. Do we want to see an updated look? So I created a few new portraits for a style I'd like to introduce this coming September and I'd love to hear what you think. Would you want to buy your child's school portrait if it looked like these? If not, what don't you like? What would you prefer to...

Its taken me a while to write about my trip but I've finally found the time and made the effort.  Better late than never I suppose. But I must learn to manage my time better. (Dunnottar Castle, in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire) Well what a week it was. Let me just start by saying I love the Scottish. They are such a friendly group of people who I feel so lucky to know. The main intention of this trip was to do a couple of workshops up at a studio in Arbroath, Newborns by Nicola . I was invited a few months back and jumped on the chance because  I've been wanting to get up that way for sometime to visit friends. Click here to see my blog about the workshops That's the amazing thing about the photography industry. Most of us work alone in a rather isolated way but because we attend conventions and trade shows we get to know so many great people from all around the world. And this week I got to spend time with 2 who I've known for about 8 or 9 years and a few m...

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 ...

Over the years I've offered a small amount of training but it was only recently that I've decided to make a more concerted effort in promoting it. Since gaining my Fellowship, receiving a few awards for my portraits and joining the Bowens team I've started to really feel as though I have something worth sharing with other photographers. Basically, I want to provide the sort of training that I would have liked all those years ago when I first started out. I've taken what I've learned from various workshops, seminars, demonstrations, vasts amount of reading and extensive trial and error and put it into a concise training plan that will give anyone new or struggling with their lighting a solid foundation in lighting along with guidance and inspiration for posing and styling portraits. Yesterday I provided a one to one training session and the portraits here are what I created to show how you can light, style and pose to create a beautiful, timeless portrait of a c...

It seems like the wish list is never ending when it comes to kit. Even with this new kit I still have 3 more very desirable items I wish to acquire over the next 12 months. But I'll have to see how the budget goes first. Anyway, in order to have a test run I requested the assistance of a couple of lovely young ladies. The first being Vickie Deakin who is a newly qualified makeup artist. As she is a friend of my step daughter I'd seen her work on Facebook and thought she was worth a try. I'd used makeup artists in the past but hadn't found one I was happy with, until now that is. I, myself don't know much about makeup but seeing Vickie work I am confident that she does. And I look forward to working with her again in future. And the second is our lovely model Faye Strachen. I stumbled across her photo on Facebook as she too is a friend of my step daughter. I liked her look and I wanted to work with someone more typical of the sort of person who might use m...

Last year when I was working on my Fellowship panel I put out a casting call for children who would be suitable for the portraits I had in mind. In doing so I received a message to consider this little boy for my project. Unfortunately he was a little young at the time, being under 2 when really 2 was the minimum age I was willing to consider and in the end it turned out that 3 was the youngest I chose to work with. And this was for the simple reason that I needed the children to be able to follow instructions so that I could be very precise in my posing of them. But I couldn't resist this little boy and felt I wanted to work him. You'll probably notice that the image above looks very similar to the one above it. I couldn't make my mind up which I liked best. To be honest I like the hand placement of the second image and the expression of the first. This is how closely I look at my portraits so try my best to make all elements just so. In each portrait I create I co...