Sibling Portrait in Central London – Just One

This was my second photo shoot with Michael and Noelle and I’m so pleased to hear that this will be an annual affair, something that I will look forward to every year. The children are so much fun, it’s always such a joy to take their photographs.

We had a brilliant time walking along the Thames and hopping in a cab from place to place to get a really lovely variety of images. I’ve got so many cool shots, which I will share in a future blog post, but this one stands out for me today (and it’s the family favourite too).

I love it because the expressions are so incredibly relaxed and natural. Photographing older children can be tricky, especially when they get a particular ‘look’ or ‘smile’ for the camera – the ‘cheese grin’ that graces any number of school photographs – and part of my job is to make the session so much fun, to interact with the children and engage to a level that we move past the ‘smile for the camera’ and we get real expressions, smiles that come from the eyes and that really show the children’s personalities.

To me this image really captures both the children, their lovely expressions really enhanced by the beautiful light and the simplicity of the composition. I used a shallow depth of field to really make them pop from the background. I love how I get a feel for their relationship too with Michael’s arm protectively around his little sister, proud of her, protective of her and with Noelle grinning back, sure and happy with her older brother but so full of independence, so much her own person. They are incredible children and I’m lucky to photograph them.

I hope you like this image, today’s just one from our photo shoot in London, do check back on the blog soon to see the rest of the pictures from this session, it’s one of my favourite shoots of the year.