I had the privilege of photographing Della and her family at their family home in Singapore recently. With her son travelling in from Jakarta (with her granddaughter) it was the perfect opportunity to get the whole family together for some family shots.

It’s not often that I get to photograph mothers with their grown up daughters, so I was particularly pleased with how the first photograph below turned out.

You may remember Janice from a few months ago when I blogged about her maternity photography session at the studio. Well, baby Charlotte arrived safe and sound the week before last and back to the studio everyone came for a newborn session. I love the photographs of Charlotte cradled in her mummy’s arms; so small, so fragile….so cute!!

Ishan and his family came into the studio last weekend. He has a 4 year old and a 3 month old baby. While preparing for the session I decided to try a family pose that I hadn’t done before….sometimes these poses work, sometimes they don’t….especially when you have small children to contend with. Luckily the kids were easy to work with and the shot of the family all in a vertical line only took a few attempts before it came together.

However my favourite photos of the session are the two “intimate” shots of mum & baby and dad & baby.

Michael

Meet Leo and Tom; 1 year old twins. They came to the studio a couple of weeks ago with their parents for a photography session. Photographing toddlers can be one of the most challenging types of sessions; their newfound sense of freedom and independence can sometimes be a bit tricky to manage in the studio. However, I’ve come up with a few tricks over the past few years to help the situation. For example, when you can’t get the parents to hold them, sit them on something (and then shoot quickly!); see the chair shot of the two of them below. For the headshot of the two of them together below I tried something a bit different, I got them to sit on their parents’ raised shins!

Wendy contacted me recently for a family photography session at the studio with her 3 children. I’ve been experimenting with lighting up my backdrops with different coloured gels recently, so I asked them to bring along bold tops in their favourite colours. We ended up with a great series of shots of the 3 children. However, my favourite photo is the first one below of the whole family and it was pretty much the last photo we took on the day. I can’t remember what I said at the time (maybe something about blinking 3 times) but we managed to get beautiful natural smiles from everyone

I was privileged to be able to photograph Soo Ping and her family at the studio a couple of weeks ago. Not only does she have a beautiful newborn baby girl but both her mother and grandmother were in Singapore to join the session. So we had an opportunity to get a four generation shot of all the “women” in the family; a first for me!

Dinesh and his family came in for some family portraits in the studio a few weeks ago. The first half of the photography session was done with the family in traditional/formal dress before everyone had a quick change of clothes for more relaxed shots.

I’m a great believer in displaying your children’s photographs in your home, whether it is wall pieces or framed prints on the sideboard. Nowadays I get so many potential clients just asking for the CD of digital images and each time my heart sinks a little bit. You just know these photos are forever going to sit on their iPad or computer without ever being printed out and displayed to their full potential. I still have wall prints up of my son when he was a few days old (he is now nearly 4 1/2). Every time I sit down in the living room I see them and it is a constant reminder of a very happy time in my life.

So, I was particularly pleased when Andrew and Jacqueline sent me the photograph below of 5 of the canvas prints they bought from me last year after their family photography session. I think they look great. Part of the reason I love what I do is because it gives a little bit of happiness to the people I photograph. There are so few jobs/careers around today where you actually have the opportunity to make people happy in their personal lives.

Michael

I’ve recently added a new product that I offer to my clients. It is a personalized image portfolio box beautifully printed on silk and treated with a protective coating to ensure your image portfolio lasts forever. The box is 14″ x 11″ and can hold prints up to size 12″ x 8″. Each print comes with its own black or white mount. The box can hold up to 18 prints and can be personalized with photos from your session as well as your names/dates etc. It can also hold a CD of the digital images.

This is a perfect product for those clients who don’t want to buy wall pieces but want to beautifully present the photos from their session.

The box is part of my Signature Collection which I now offer. Details of which can be found on my packages page

We split the session into two; first we captured some natural light shots of Janice on her own. Janice was lit by reflected window light only, set against a homemade light grey/green backdrop. The second half of the session we used some studio lights and brought in Andrew and Naomi for some family photographs.

My favourite photograph of the session was the first one you see here; Naomi playing around Mummy’s dress.

Actually, you may notice that Janice is not exposing her bump in any of the photographs, and this was a conscious decision that we made a number of weeks before the session. You don’t have to expose the bump to get some beautiful photographs of the expectant mother. Think photographs of “beautiful women who are pregnant” rather than photographs of “pregnant women”.

Janice actually writes a blog herself on her family life and thoughts on being a mother. It is well worth a read.

Finally, I would just like to thank Janice and her family again for such a wonderful session and for being so accommodating. The cakes were lovely by the way