Back to work – Hurrah!

As lockdown draws to a close and the world starts to open up again, I’m thrilled to be heading back to work photographing babies, children and families over the next few months. It’s been the longest period without regular photo shoots since I started my family photography business back in 2003 and it’s fair to say I’ve missed working terribly.  I love my work, I love meeting new people, seeing regular clients and I love the challenge of photographing your children, it’s my favourite thing to do.

It’s wonderful to be looking forward to this coming weekend, and to photo shoots on Saturday, Sunday and Monday which mark my return to work with a busy few days.  I have a new family to meet and two returning families to see again, I can’t wait to see how the children have grown and to hear what they have been up to over the last few months.

The next few weeks and months will see some slight changes in how shoots take place as we will be working outdoors rather than in people’s homes. This might mean more postponements due to weather but I’m hoping that the British summer will be kind to us and that the sun will shine (or, at least, we will avoid torrential rain, a grey overcast day is wonderful for photography).  Newborn and baby shoots are moving outdoors too but that’s something I’ve always done a lot of and so, with a few tweaks, I’m looking forward to offering safe and socially distanced newborn sessions to clients with babies due in the next few months.

For those of you whose babies were born during lockdown then the beautiful 12-16-week stage is such a joy for photography and perfectly suited to outdoor sessions as your little ones can lift their heads or sit in a Bumbo chair and watch the world go by.  There’s hope in the air after these terrible few months and I’m looking forward to a wonderful summer.

I know some of my regular readers and returning clients are curious as to what I’ve been up to these past few months and it’s been surprisingly busy even though my core work of photographing families has been on hiatus.

I’ve been doing a lot of work for Canon in my role as brand ambassador and my YouTube videos for the Canon Europe channel have seen over 25K views in the last two months.

I’ve also created my own YouTube channel with instructional videos to help my fellow professional photographers develop their craft and I’m looking forward to building that slowly over the next few years, creating more content that will help others to improve their photography and will offer insights into my creative process. I’ve attached one below, a bit off topic for family photography but an interesting insight into some of the camera sketching I’ve done over lockdown.

Another recent project for Canon will be seeing the light of day in a couple of weeks and that’s been brilliant fun (but is currently top secret), do keep an eye on the blog for more news in due course.

And then I’ve been learning to take time off and relax. As those of you who know me will be aware, I live and breathe photography. Photographing families has been my passion for the last seventeen years and time off has never been my strong point. I have needed something creative to keep my mind busy during lockdown and so I’ve rediscovered the piano after a thirty-year break and I am becoming an ace at origami. I like to think that the ability to craft a dinosaur from a square of paper will be a hugely useful skill on my family photo shoots.

But I can’t wait to be back to work, photographing families is what I love and I’m looking forward to recording your family life in beautiful photographs this year. If, you are thinking of booking a family photo shoot over the summer then do get in touch, I’m taking bookings for July and August and, of course, into the autumn.