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HELEN BARTLETT / FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHY

Children’s and family photography in the Cotswolds

This summer, I’ve been travelling all over the UK in the pursuit of fabulous children’s and family portrait photography. It’s been commonplace for me to be leaving my home in Crouch End at the crack of dawn to jump on an early train, or even to be travelling of an evening to a B&B to be up bright and early for my family photo shoots around the country.

The shoot featured in today’s blog post saw me travelling to Burford, a beautiful village at the gateway to the Cotswolds to photograph Lisa and her beautiful family. I’ve been lucky enough to photograph the family twice before and so I was thrilled to be asked to visit them again – I knew I would spend the morning laughing my head off in between taking children and family photographs, they are such a fantastic family to spend time with.

Being woken at my B&B at 5am by the flash of lightening and the crash of thunder didn’t exactly bode well, nor did the following three hours of pouring rain but – as if by magic – by the time I finished my coffee at 8.15am, the rain was beginning to die down. We thought we would brave the garden anyway -it was such a beautiful garden and I’m quite convinced that children are waterproof, or at least shower proof and it wasn’t really raining…. honestly….

We went outside to play and Joesph showed me his ball skills – football, rugby, cricket using plastic rackets, golf using plastic clubs… you name it, we played it and wonderful fun it was. I captured children’s and family photographs as we played games and explored the garden.

Lisa has the most amazing garden, which is a child’s paradise with seemingly endless lawn to run around on. We played hide and seek in the trees and the children showed me their den before we stopped for elevenses (or nine-thirtyses, as they would probably more accurately be described). We were then back to it, with more hide and seek, banana tag and some family shots before it struck us, we were all really hot and what was that? The sun? Somehow, when we had been too busy taking pictures, the weather had gone from apocalyptic to summer sunshine and then, well, you kind of really have to get the sprinklers out, don’t you?

I did manage one day last summer to have a shoot that involved playing with water and hosepipes, but the weather was so dismal last year that it was only the once. I have high hopes for this year as I do really, really love photographing children playing with water – it’s such a fun thing, there are so many games you can play and I have so many childhood memories of water fights with my brothers and my friends down the road. Somehow running around with a water pistol seems an real party of a summer holiday to me.

It was such good fun and, as always, I love watching the relationships between the family when water comes in to play – how it is always funniest to chase mummy with the hose (we certainly did that when I was small), how siblings will promise and promise and promise not to spray each other until they have the hose in their hand, how water makes everyone laugh so much. It was brilliant.

We finished with a few family shots with the children in their smarter clothes – a great way to finish the shoot and to get a slightly different look to the pictures – a calm moment after the mayhem!

I’m so thrilled with these children and family lifestyle portrait photographs from Burford in the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire and I hope you enjoy them too.

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