Beautiful Georgia came to the studio for a Christmas mini shoot. I love one year old babies. It's such a joyful period to photograph. They have developed bucket loads of personality and love to smile and giggle. They sit up confidently and we can start to photograph glimpses of their personality and who they are becoming. Enjoy these sweet images of Georgia, isn't she just delightful!
This beautiful baby girl was already a couple of weeks old when I photographed her. I speak about "older newborns" often on my blog. I do get older newborns book in from time to time. The first thing I do is book in as soon as possible. Due to time constraints, we decided to do this session in two parts; the first part was this precious baby girl on her own and the second part was with her family. I am so glad we chose this, as the newborn session was quite long. When baby is a few weeks old, they already get used to being left alone to sleep and they may not move from pose to pose so easily. The plus side is that we often get more awake shots from these sessions, which are just divine. However, with patience I always get the images I need. This is one beautiful family, as you will see. Baby girl has the milkiest, smoothest skin. I could run my finger over her cheek all day long. And when I met her 2 year old brother, I longed for those days when my children were little. He is so happy, curious and full of smiles.
We had a lovely session and I am sure you will agree, they are so very, very cute!
When my client from Oatlands hired me, she had a very clear vision of what she wanted. "A large black and white collage with 30 odd images of my family being natural". It was a very specific brief. In order to achieve her brief, we had to have a lot of fun. We took photos in the bedrooms, the lounge, the park, and outside. We ended the session with a big splash into the pool. It was so much fun! Collaboration on the collage was a team effort and was the result of a few meetings over coffee. I love the final result. It is a 1.5 metre by 0.9 metre family heirloom on acrylic. I cannot express how amazing this image looks. I literally had tears in my eyes when I opened it. My clients' vision was amazing and I am so proud of what we achieved together.
This is the final collage:
Here are some images of us having fun along the way...
I had a few private messages and emails about the following image, so I thought I would give a behind the scenes look at what my vision was and how this image was created. A little bit of background first...when it comes to photography, I like clean lines, clean processing and uncluttered imagery. I have been trying to push myself lately, both in terms of imagery and processing. I am pushing my vision of styling the shoot and telling the story. I am also playing more with post processing, to try and enhance the story telling.
My vision for this shoot was a boy in a boat. He is on an adventure and is looking out to the distance, contemplating what is ahead, what is in the future. My vision had a whimsical feel. And with that in mind, I headed out with my 5 year old twins into the bush.
This is the plate shot, the basis of the image.
This is a pretty magic setting in Carlingford, but still, I wanted something more whimsical. I wanted the water to be more misty. I knew I needed a slower shutter speed to make it happen. I was going to experiment with my flash, to see how far I could lower the shutter speed, however, it was a cold day and I didn't want my son to have to wait in the cold as I experimented with my equipement, so I decided a composite would do. My tripod broke (yes, everything was going against me that day), so I used a rock as a tripod to get this image, which became the water shot.
I knew I wanted the boat to have a sail, so I made one from some material I have for my newborn shoots, and a stick we found on the way into the bush. My twins helped create the image.
And finally, I got one of the boys into the boat in the pose I had in mind.
I took all of these images into photoshop and merged them together. This process was quite time consuming, as I was quite specific with what I wanted my image to be. So there was plenty of cloning, masking and patching to make the final image just right. This is the final result and I was so pleased that it turned out very close to my original vision.
I met little Daniella when she was already a few weeks old. I was stunned by how milky and smooth her skin was. When you see her, you just want to rub your finger over her cheeks...what a precious baby girl. One thing I loved about this client was that she took her time to find a reputable sydney photographer. There are a lot of photographers out there; some are cheaper, some are more expensive, some offer digital files, some have studios and some come to you. It is really important to hire the photographer that is right for your needs. Ask yourself what is most important. If quality of the imagery is very important, you will need to be flexible with price; if props are important to you, you will need to look through the portfolio of the photographers on your shortlist to see if their props match your vision. Some photographers have very colourful images and backgrounds, and others (like me) have more natural textures and props. There is no one photographer for everyone, and it is important for you to do a little research so that you find the photographer that is a match for you.
Daniella's Mum called me and asked me a host of questions before she hired me. I assume she did this with a shortlist of photographers. Please don't ever be afraid to, we never mind answering questions. In fact, I was so impressed with her dedication to finding a photographer for her baby girl, and I was very pleased she chose me. They purchased the gold collection, so they were very satisfied clients.
Now let me share some beautiful photos of gorgeous Daniella and her lovely parents.
This precious baby girl was so petite and delicate with the smoothest skin. I love that you can see the clamp on her unbilical cord in some of the images. Older people have often stopped my in the shops and told me that I should enjoy my babies because they grow so fast. This really is true and I love any detail in the image that shows how new they are. Even in a few short months, those images become priceless. When I was selecting the images to blog, I understood my client's dilemma when she was choosing her order, as I had way too many favourites.
My job sees me travelling from Sydney's Northern Beaches, to the Eastern Suburbs and out to Sydney's West. This client was from a small suburb called Emu Plains, which is the suburb we lived in when we first came to Australia. It's a small little world!
I photographed two very beautiful sisters. I originally had a vision for a ballerina on black. We then incorporated the chair and became a bit more funky/contemporary. And the Mum brought along the sweetest pink dress so I knew I needed to photograph that against something much softer, so I used my bone backdrop. This Mum has impeccable taste in clothes. That, coupled with the most beautiful girls and it really is so easy to photograph them.
As many of you know, my favourite product by far is acrylic wall mounts. The image looks like it is printed on glass and comes ready to hang. I know it sounds cliche to say it has the wow factor, but it literally does. When people walk into a home with acrylic, they gasp 'wow'!
We had the images in the chair printed on acrylic and they look amazing!
Here are a few images from our session.
The acrylic wall mounts:
Sleeping beauty...
I met this family when they had their second daughter. We instantly connected. The Mum is a lovely client, the type of client that all photographers love. She really values photography, she trusts in what I am doing and is so kind in her feedback to me. When I first met them, we went to do family photos in the main bedroom. The light in the room was beautiful, but, it was coming in the wrong direction. I knew that I would get the best results if we moved the bed, but I had never moved a whole room around and I didn't really want to ask. I had moved small parts of a clients' room, but not something large like the bed. Still, I asked, because I knew that the results would be best :) And Elise, you created a monster, as I now happily boss people around to move whatever needs to be moved!
So when I got there this time, the furniture was already swapped around! Yay!
This beautiful little boy faced many challenges before he even got here. And he was born at 33 weeks. Our session was held 3 days before his due date, so he was nearly 7 weeks old. In photography terms, a 7 week old baby is no longer a newborn. We just can't get them to sleep or curl up like one. The exception to that rule is when they are premmies. This beautiful boy went with the flow and let me move him around and pose him as I wished. He was so beautiful and perfect, and had the silkiest skin.
This was one of my favourite sessions from 2012. One reason was because I had already met the family and I loved watching them grow. Another is that I love so many images from this session.
I have titled this image "Safe in Daddy's Hands" because after everything he went through, this image means so much more than the typical baby-in-Dad's-hands pose. I hope you love these images as much as I do.
When I meet expectant parent's, I always visualise what I think their baby will look like! I have done enough maternity and newborn sessions now to have some sort of idea about how baby will look. Rhodry was no exception and he did look a lot like I thought he would, although he had a lot more hair than I imagined. He had a beautiful head of fine, dark hair. I didn't use as many hats during this session as I wanted to see all that lovely hair. And he sure was as cute as a button, just like I thought he would be :)
I had already photograped this beautiful Mumma-to-be, however, I had a few visions in my mind for a beach maternity session that I wanted to fulfill, so I asked Amanda if she would like to have a different type of session. Amanda is fun and loves to try new things so she met up with me at Coogee for our session. Each season, I like to shoot at a different beach. This season, I chose Coogee. It has great access and parking, which is perfect when I have a lot to carry. More importantly, I love the colours at Coogee, the rocks have beautiful warm colours in the rocks and deep greens scattered throughout the rocks too. This translates to beautiful imagery.
On the day of our shoot, there was a lot of seaweed. I was trying to scoop it away. I am sure I looked funny from behind trying to scoop it all up, but it really was a futile exercise. It was everywhere. So we embraced the seaweed as best we could. It does add colour and texture to the images, I think.
And I have to share a behind the scenes image from this shoot. Amanda's husband was a good sport (despite being unwell) and helped us manage the material in the wind. He was pivotal in getting these beautiful images.
