My approach to family photography sessions is always in a very natural way. I try to capture the essence of the family as it really is. Traditional family portraits are also included as part of the session, but these are as spontaneous as possible. This can be achieved by just letting the family have fun surrounded by beautiful outdoor backdrops, rather than being forced to stare awkwardly at the camera. Partly through requests from clients, I’ve decided to take this lifestyle family photography one step further and have recently introduced London Day in the Life sessions into my business. Instead of being with the family for a couple of hours in the morning I will join them at breakfast time and stay all the way through until bedtime. This gives us plenty of time to document a regular day in family life.
This approach includes all the fun parts of the day, but also the times where tears and tantrums appear. It catches the seemingly mundane tasks as well as the more exciting aspects of the day. The end result is a unique and powerful record of family life captured in one day. It will also be a source of reminiscence over a lifetime.
My first Day in the Life session was with Louise and her lovely family. This consisted of her husband and three young children. My only brief to the family was to carry on with normal life and pretend the camera wasn’t there. I wasn’t sure how it would feel being with another family all day but I was accepted immediately. I actually found it incredibly easy to fade into the background when required.
The best way to cool off in hot water? Buckets of water over your head!
It was lovely to become a part of another family for a whole day. Louise and her family were so welcoming; the kids were sweet, charming and very funny. We were very lucky with the weather too. It was a gloriously warm day in May so we spent a lot of time playing in the garden. Then followed some necessary time cooling off inside! We then headed to the park for more fun. Here the two older children had a great time pouring buckets of water over each other in the water fountains of Bishops Park.
I had such a great experience on my first Day in the Life session and can’t wait to do more. What was particularly great was that after a couple of hours the family really did forget about my camera. This enabled us to get totally natural shots of the kids just being kids.
After the images were ready I loaded them into a private online gallery and was so pleased to hear that Louise was overjoyed with her photos. She said it would be great to look back in years to come and be reminded how a day in their life used to be with a young family.
If you’d like to document a day in your family’s life please do get in touch for more details . It would be a privilege to join you for a day.
