Christina Lauder Portraits

This past week I got to photograph another special child and this time it was different yet again.  Emily-May is 8 years old and has both modelled in the past and regularly auditions and earns parts in national and local musical productions.  So following instructions was not at all a problem which made this session a very relaxing and enjoyable one.  This session allowed me the chance to try out some new stuff I have.  I've bought some new backgrounds recently that I've been dying to have a play with so today I brought a couple of them out.  I just love how many different looks I can create from within my meagre (yet perfect for me) studio.  And I will continue to build this collection (until I run out of room).   Having this variety is vital for me to keep myself from getting bored by creating the same old portraits all the time.  Its also important to me to give my clients a choice and some...

This time I got the pleasure of photographing a young girl.  These images are still part of my current personal project.  I am loving doing some work for myself.  I feel a bit like I have my hobby back.  Before I made the decision to be a photographer I worried that the thing I did to make myself happy and distract myself from day to day life would be lost forever.  I didn't want this thing that made me happy to become a burden.  Thankfully, for the most part, it hasn't.  But sometimes it really helps to do some photography for me, so that the hobby part of photography is still there. I'm finding this project a great learning experience for me.  With the pressure of pleasing a client gone I can relax and do what I need to do to create the portrait I want to create without fear of letting a client down for not having produced what they wanted.  Photographing these children is such a joy.  Ava was a smiley, lovely little ...

  These photos were taken in a non professional capacity but I still wanted to share.  Doing photos for a living sometimes means I choose to leave the camera at home and take a break from taking pictures.  But this event had me excited to shoot for fun.  It had all the elements that make me want to capture the moment.  It had great weather, loads of smiling faces and vibrant beautiful colours.  What more could I want?      It also helped that my daughter took part along with a large number of the Hinckley Running Club Juniors (run by my husband).  So we had to be there anyway.  But I'm glad I was.         The kids clearly loved the event.  I don't think I've ever seen a group of happier kids who were about to embark on a 1 mile run.  My daughter for one would not have taken part had it not been for the chance to cover herself in paint.    It was a...

For those who saw the casting call last month this entry in my blog includes portraits made from the first of those sessions.  I love creating portraits.  For me its more than just taking a picture.  Its creating something artistic.  It involves planning and thought.  I always have a plan in my head and I even put it down on paper in my ideas journal.  Every session I do, for my clients or my personal projects, I have a plan.  Its wonderful when the resulting images match those in my head from the planning stages.  The image above is a perfect match.  The better I get as a photographer the closer the results are to these ideas I have.  A large part of my life is spent coming up with ideas for portraits.  Sometimes I browse the internet.  This will often mean Pinterest or my favourite photographer's websites.  And sometimes my ideas come more passively, in watching television, movies or reading magazines. ...

I photographed this young man recently and it was a pleasure.  He had such a great smile and charm which made my job so much easier.  I forget sometimes what it is like to photograph someone who can make my job feel effortless.  So often I have to coax out a smile or practically beg and plead for a look in my direction or to get them to stand or sit still.  But Harvey was a dream.  Not only did he quite willingly do as I asked but he also helped come up with his own poses.  This one below was entirely of his own doing.  With a 1, 2, 3 he made it happen and I loved it.   I met Harvey when he was having lunch at his mother's tea shoppe in Hinckley, Dolly's Tea Shoppe .  He was delightful and I knew he was someone I'd enjoy photographing.  So I made his mum an offer.  I would photograph her son in exchange for allowing me to have a couple of framed prints in her shoppe, one of which will be of her son.  ...