Baby Photography Battersea – Just One – Tonya

Last week I had the pleasure to meet Tonya and her lovely family in their beautiful Battersea home for a baby and family photography session. We’re nearing the end of the ‘season’ now as Christmas bears down upon us – I can hardly believe it is December tomorrow – and it’s lovely to still be out and about in London photographing families as the festive season draws near. Tonya and I had spent time on the phone before the session discussing the best time for photographs for her family –whether to wait until the spring but I’m so glad we did the photo shoot now as baby Sophia was at the most perfect age for photographs and in just a few months she will have grown and changed so much.

Ten months is a delightful age for pictures – baby’s are so much fun and so full of personality but are still very much babies – it wont be long before Sophia will be a little girl, running around (I can hardly believe she is taking her first steps already, maybe we have a world athletics champion in the making!). By spring we would have had a very different session, still wonderful, but different. I do think it’s good not to delay photo shoots waiting for the ‘perfect moment’ as we can always take more pictures at a later date but if you miss a delightful developmental stage, there’s no way we can go back to take photographs retrospectively. The early years fly by so fast, regular photo shoots are a wonderful way to record these lovely moments.

And what a lovely moment I have to share with you on the blog today! I asked Tonya what had drawn her to my photography and was thrilled when she said how much she enjoyed my natural style, images where the photographer blends to the background and the photographs are about the family and their normal life rather than fads and fashions of stylized children’s photography. I hope this image captures everything she hoped for in a family photograph, I love it.

This type of picture means so much to me – it’s an image that captures this special time so well and which is full of personality. Sophia clearly loves book and I was thrilled to be introduced to the wonderful tale of How to Hide a Lion, not a book I knew before but one I’ll be adding to my arsenal of recommendations. I feel this image really shows Sophia’s joy at reading, it’s so dynamic with her hand outstretched, the big smile on her face, caught up in the exciting story. I love how happy both parents look while reading with their beautiful daughter. I truly believe that reading to children is one of life’s great pleasures and I feel this picture really shows that – Baby Sophia excited by the story and her parents, enjoying this family activity and instilling a love of reading that I hope Sophia will keep long into adulthood.

If I had to give this image a title I would call it ‘Happiness’ everyone is clearly so happy and full of love, it’s everything I look for in a baby and family portrait and I hope you like it as much as I do.