Just back from my longest camping trip in years and feeling thoroughly replenished by so much time outdoors, I’m very excited to be working in collaboration with Treemendus Learning to offer family portraits at a Forest School session.

On Sunday 20^th September experienced environmental educator Gemma Hindi will be running a family Forest School workshop in the Streatham/Norwood area. Families can enjoy a morning in the woods together exploring nature and learning skills such as: fire lighting; tool use and green woodwork; den building; natural cordage and seasonal arts and crafts. I will be there photographing families as they learn together. Every family will get one free family portrait print as a record of their day and will have the option of ordering more prints.

I love photographing children exploring the natural world as it helps me to capture their sense of wonder and excitement. I’m really looking forward to working with Treemendus Learning, as I will get an opportunity to photograph families interacting around natural activities and create some unique and special images.

The session will be from 10am -1pm and costs £22 per person. Please get in touch with Treemendus Learning for more information and to book places.

I am very excited and proud to have one of my pictures in an upcoming show at the Photofusion Gallery in Brixton.

For the last year and a half I have been part of the New Creative Markets programme at Photofusion. This was designed to help early and mid-career artists increase the sales of their work and achieve greater sustainability via a series of talks, events and workshops.  I attended many interesting events with some having a massive impact on the way I work –  particularly with regard to editing, developing new creative ideas and talking about my approach to photography. I also met a fascinating group of fellow freelance photographers with very varied styles and am looking forward to seeing all their work in this show.

The exhibition runs from 17th July to 28th August. It will feature the work of over a hundred photographers who participated in the programme, each photographer selecting one image representative of a captivating story, concept or visual style. The result is a lively and dynamic salon-style exhibition, showing the diversity of photographic image-making created by London-based photographers. I highly recommend coming to see it if you can.

I just received a lovely testimonial from the mother of the striking girl with the blue ice cream on my postcards. It’s always lovely to get good feedback and I look forward to photographing her family again soon.

“I have used Anna for personal and professional photos and always get lovely comments about the quality. No end to her talents as she has a handy studio and works wonders outdoors as well.
I am sitting here looking at my family photos from last year and not a day goes by that I don’t think about the next set.  It’s spring again and I am looking forward to Anna taking a glimpse in to our lives that can be shared with friends and family so far away.  She makes everyone at ease and unnoticeably can manoeuvre even the most excitable toddlers in to the right position.  Off to book our next session now!”

Last week I had another session with a new sibling being added to a family, this time in my studio. I’d photographed this family when their daughter was around five months old and it was wonderful to photograph their son at the same age.

The main challenge with a mobile child and immobile baby is often getting them in the frame together for long enough to take a picture but we managed that several times, as well as lots of whole family shots.

To an only child like myself the relationship between siblings is beautiful and mysterious. I was happy to be able to capture some interaction between them, as well as the parents looking fully relaxed in their roles. Watching families grow and change over the years is definitely one of my favourite parts of my work.

At the moment I seem to be doing a lot of follow-up sessions with families that I have already photographed, which I really love. Sometimes it is because they have a new sibling joining the family. Other times the parents have booked a first year package (three photo sessions in a year), as these parents had. Since I saw them when their son was newborn they have moved to Hampshire, which is further than I usually travel for a photo session but made a nice day out. It was a gloriously sunny spring day, perfect for a drive in the countryside, and their new home was very light and airy and great for photos.

The best thing about these sessions is always seeing how the children are growing. Despite being tired and quite ready for a nap their son showed his character and posed wonderfully. A friend of mine once said that this is a golden age of childhood – when children can sit up by themselves and smile but can’t escape! That certainly makes it a great age for a photo session.

The weekend before last I taught a photography workshop at LattjoPop in Streatham, organised by House of Bricolage. I’ve been teaching photography to adults for over ten years but have only recently started offering workshops for parents and children to attend together. This workshop was aimed at giving parents knowledge and a few useful tricks to help them take better pictures of their children. The children mainly posed for the photos but the older boy really got involved. He took lots of pictures himself as well as creating a fabulous dinosaur diorama which was a popular photographic subject for all the participants.

The workshop whizzed through the basics of exposure (ISO, shutter speed and aperture), camera settings, different types of light and lighting, composition and editing.

All of the participants seemed to take away some knowledge or ideas to improve their photography and it’s been really exciting to see the pictures they have taken during, and since,  the workshop.

If you are interested in future workshops please get in touch.

A couple of weeks ago I returned to a family who I first photographed when their daughter was a newborn, after her inspirational breech home birth. It is always lovely to revisit families and see how the children are growing, so I was delighted to be asked back to photograph her as a six month old.

This family is always especially enjoyable to work with because the mother shares creative ideas with me about the session in advance, including that she wants all the images to be black and white. As I became involved in photography before digital cameras my first love was monochrome film, but nowadays I don’t get much opportunity to work without colour. Knowing that is how these pictures will be presented allows me to flex my pre-visualisation muscles and try to imagine the tonal range of the final images.

The beautiful early spring light and the room that we used helped create an almost tactile range of textures and tones: crisp white sheets, creamy baby skin, cascading dark wavy hair and intricately patterned knitted jumper. I remembered what I first loved about image making and felt that I was seeing light and tone as a true photographer again.

I’m currently talking to a journalist for an article about the positives and negatives of photographing the weddings of friends and family. It is something I have done several times and, whilst I have always enjoyed it, sometimes balancing your roles as guest and photographer can be tricky.

Fortunately the same cannot be said of photographing the children of people you know. Doing this, particularly of newborns, is purely a treat and privilege. It’s always exciting to meet a new baby but when they are the child of a long term friend, when I look into their face and see traces of people I have known and loved for years, I think this is the most amazing job I could imagine.

I recently photographed the newborn baby of my oldest friend. Her mother and my mother have been friends since school and were pregnant with us at the same time. There’s a wonderful picture of our mums standing bump to bump – we almost knew each other before we were born. Meeting her daughter and photographing her was probably the most emotional newborn session I have done. As an only child, this is the closest I get to a niece on my side of the family.

Welcome to the world, little one. We’ve been waiting for you.