At Christmas there’s nothing more complicated and natural than getting a young child to hold a set of Christmas fairy lights. As she was playing with the lights, they gave a lovely glow on her face, so by the end we had a great photo that went on the cover of their family Christmas cards.
As Halloween approached we did a studio portrait session while wearing a fancy dress witch’s costume. Although we did create some posed photos, we most-enjoyed the informal photos where this young girl was allowed to play with her witch’s costume and to just be herself. It gave us the opportunity for lots of cackling and role-playing that everyone enjoyed.
A walk around the gardens of a large country estate offered us some great outdoor portrait photo opportunities with lovely backgrounds of trees and flowers. The Japanese garden became a temporary playground, which kept someone’s attention for a while.
Our approach to working with families is to work at the pace of the children and see how the time unfolds. Of course we’ll have a plan of what we’d really love to do but, as is so often the case, we’ll find that if us adults are flexible, then it allows the children to be more relaxed, less bored and to have a more enjoyable time – and happy children make for great photos.
You can see our approach in these photos. In the first photo we’ve set up the pose to give a more traditional, posed portrait photo that we all adore. However, in the second photo we asked the young girl to pull different expressions – she loved doing it, as you can see. Then finally, the third photo is an example of a candid informal photo where the young girl isn’t looking into the camera, yet it really captures what she’s like as a person.
A trip into the grounds of a country house near Henley allowed us to create some lovely outdoor portraits. The weather was dry, but quite stormy, which made for a great sky in the background. In our Experience Photoshoots, we always aim to allow time for children to have some fun and to be themselves, as we know the photos will be so much better (and they’ll enjoy themselves so much more).
Late spring is ‘Bluebell Time’ in the woods, so on one fine spring day we did a family photoshoot in a field of beautiful bluebells. We could have set up this photos in a more staged way, but instead we thought the addition of Winnie the Pooh was a great idea, as it was this young girl’s favourite toy at this stage of her life. Every time her parents look back at this photo over the years to come it will bring back all of those memories of that time in their lives and what their daughter was like at that time.
This photoshoot was lots of fun, as this young lady wanted to make everyone else laugh. While not all of these photos are the type you’d hang on your wall, they’re lovely in a family album, as they all capture that sparkle in someone’s personality that everyone adores as she entertains them.
What we’ve done here is to really capture her character and bring out her mischievousness – it’s difficult to get children’s to trust you enough to do this but it’s one of those things we’re really good at – being able to get children to relax in our company and to really be themselves.
A local park offered us the chance to roam free in the gardens, and to create some lovely, natural-looking portraits. The first of these was staged deliberately, but the others were achieved by letting her wander about the park and to just be herself.
A few props or accessories can go a long way with children during a photoshoot, so please do bring some along if you feel they’d help.
In this studio family photoshoot we allowed extra time for this young girl to play around and experiment a little, which gave us some great additional photos. Wearing candy-stripe pink gave a good contrast against the white background for these portraits.
This was such a natural photo – no one asked the young boy to do it – he had his very own sword and was determined to stand on guard alongside the Life Guard outside Horse Guards Parade in London.
Just look at the expression on the soldier’s face – on the first photo he’s unsure what to do, probably never having had such a situation before. Then on the second photo, when the boy marches away, you can see the soldier desperately trying to hold back a smile.
Christmas is coming and it’s time to get the family Christmas cards printed, so time for a fabulous studio portrait session to get a range of great festive photos for the family and friends to see. Amazing how a Santa’s hat and some tinsel adds that festive touch. We encouraged this young lady to bring along her favourite teddy on this occasion, as it allowed her to dress him up and offer us even more lovely family photos of her having a lovely relaxing time.
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