Family photography, London

One question often posed to me by friends and clients alike is when is a good time to have family portrait photographs taken? I don’t mean what time of year or day..I mean when on earth in the chaos of everyday life is a good time to carve out space for a family portrait shoot?!

I think the answer is that there’s never a perfect time in one’s life to have a family portrait session. At the time when these photographs were taken baby Ida needed to be tube fed. Thankfully the tubes are now out, and are a thing of the past. But the photographs that we took that day are a testament to how amazingly well the family worked together to deal with a difficult situation. The tenderness that is plainly there to see in the way everyone interacts and helps to give Ida her tube feed is unique to their journey together and their family story. The day in the life of a family changes so very gradually. We never notice that things have changed until a phase has passed, and our loved ones have moved on to new milestones, new phases and new circumstances befall us. Taking photographs helps to remind me to savour the blessings that today has given me. The fact that this family had a testing situation highlighted the way they all love and support each other so much, especially when life isn’t all plain sailing.

There’s also a lot of humour in some of these photographs, be it a joke being shared in a captured image, or something funny that they weren’t aware of at the time, like the way Dad pauses on the stairs to answer a question, leg dangling in mid air, that they all found hilarious afterwards when looking through the set for the first time.

I really love the card game images from the end of the day, where everyone is gathered together around the dining table, having a riotously funny game of snap and a cup cake!

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain”