I recently had the most wonderful weekend photographing a lovely family. I’ve been really looking forward to sharing it.

The mother contacted me a very long time ago after finding my details on the South London Attachment Parenting Facebook group. She initially contacted me to enquire about photographing the birth, which I have never done before but was massively intrigued by. That ended up not working out but she did get in touch with me to do a lifestyle shoot with her partner, baby and older child and to photograph the new baby’s baptism.

My own interest in learning about attachment parenting has massively influenced the way I work as a family portrait photographer, so I always really enjoy working with families who have a similar approach. For me, the comfort and happiness of the child is always more important than getting a particular shot and I believe that if the family are relaxed and happy then we can make great photographs together.

This family were really great to work with. Their son seemed to feel comfortable with me very quickly and was happy to let me photograph him playing with his dad and his toy trains. I also managed to get some very cute pictures of his little sister snoozing in her sling. We then went out for a walk/scoot around the neighbourhood, which meant an unexpected opportunity to take some of my favourite type of pictures – children enjoying autumn. We even got to throw leaves over each other. Then it was back home to get some pictures of the family reading together and some of the baby in her very special reusable nappy.

I so enjoyed working with this family and was very happy to come back the next day to photograph the baptism, which I’ll post about next week. I also received the most wonderful feedback from the mother:

“I also wanted to say how positive of an experience it was to have photos taken by you. We felt very relaxed with your presence and appreciated how you just worked with the flow of our home. One think that particularly stood out was how you knelt down to our son’s level and spoke with him about why we wanted to scoot/walk in the direction we pointed. I think we all knew that if I just scooped him up, that would surely lead to tears. We found you via the SELAP group so I assume you are a similar minded parent, but it really means a lot to us that you were willing to step in and not just photograph.”