Antonina Mamzenko Blog: Natural Family Photography in London

Welcome to my blog. It’s the place to get to know me a bit better and where I share some of my work, photos from my travels, musings about life, photography and parenthood.

Our trip to Tallinn – captured on a smartphone

A few weeks back my son and I have spent a wonderful couple of days exploring the old town of Tallinn in Estonia. Usually I carry my “big” camera with me whenever I travel, as I love capturing our adventures, but after a busy month the last thing I wanted to do was to be in work mode again (and I can’t help it, if I have my big camera I feel like I have to work really hard to create great photos). So instead this time I decided to go light: no camera, just a brand new Google Pixel – and it’s pretty impressive camera.

One frame: vacation family photos at Cafe Royal Hotel

For today’s One Frame I picked this image from a recent Vacation Photoshoot in London for a family from the Middle-East. It was a very last minute booking as they stopped off in London for a few days on their way back home from the States, but I was delighted to accommodate as it wasn’t the first time I photographed these guys! We first met in 2011, when their first son was just about to turn 2 years old, and now they have been blessed with the second cheeky little monkey, who was now also two years old!

Product Showcase: Fine Art Album for baby photos

It’s been a while since I’ve shared some of the lovely albums that have been going out to my families, so let’s fix this today! Last week I shared photos from this gorgeous baby photo shoot in Hersham and mentioned that the family purchased one of my Fine Art Albums, so here it is!

Baby Photos at Home in Hersham

I have a confession to make. Newborns and babies are my favorite subjects to photograph. I love the fact that they just are, they are completely themselves and they experience the world with this wide-eyed amazement and wonder that’s unlike anything else.

Natural family & baby photos at home in London N2

A few weeks back I traveled to North London to photograph a wonderful family and their life with their newest addition. They greeted me like an old friend, even though it was the first time I’d photographed them, and I really enjoyed our time together.

But my house is too small

It took me a while to sum up the courage to book a photographer to come and take documentary photographs of us, at our home. Every time the doubts would creep in and I’d start panicking a little. Scratch that, I’d start panicking A LOT.

Big Ben and Millenium Bridge vacation photos for an Aussie family in London

Summer for me always means a ton of vacation sessions in Central London. I love taking my clients along one of my favorite routes, from Millenium Bridge over to Big Ben. There are plenty of opportunities for fantastic photos that simply scream “London” – and all without the need for stiff posing or cheesy smiles.

How do you feed your baby?

When I had my son, over 6 years ago now, I had the whole birth thing figured out. Really, I did.

I went to Active Birth classes, learned all about the process of labour and birth, went to acupuncture sessions, had Chinese herb foot baths and did headstands in a local swimming pool (much to the amusement of the onlookers) to turn my breech baby around (really, I did) because I was determined to have a natural and, preferably, drug-free birth (which, again, I did).

I’m telling you all this not to brag, but to say this: with parenthood, there’s this universal balance at play. If one thing comes easy to you, another one, inevitably, will be hard as hell. I consider the birth part as having been fairly easy for me (the 4-day labour notwithstanding), but what I didn’t expect was that breastfeeding – the thing I didn’t even consider to be “a thing that could be problematic” – would turn out to be so damn hard.