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.
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.
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.
One of my favourite things to do as a photographer is to document the average, sometimes pretty boring, family days. See, I don’t think they are boring. I look at your life and see the wonder, and beauty, and humour, and something worth remembering, in every moment, however insignificant.
I don’t know about you, but I take thousands and thousands of pictures every year, both on my iPhone and on my big camera. And I’m talking just personal images: photos from our trips, birthday parties, days out, everyday moments, cute selfies, random pretty flowers and sunsets and so on.
While organising and working on images for my clients is a well-established process for me, keeping on top on my personal digital archive is a whole different beast, and is often an afterthought and there’s never enough time for it.
Photographing newborns and babies is one of the very special perks of my job as a family photographer. I love the fact that I get to help London families capture this very special stage in their lives, from the first few days of bringing their new baby home, through the first year and to the baby’s first birthday. In this blog post, I’m going to share ten of things you must make sure you photograph (or hire a professional to photograph) before your baby turns one.