Professional Family Photography
FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHY
Professional Family Photography
Family Photography – To be invited into the life of a family to photograph them is a great privilege. When I was child and into my teens, I had no interest in photographing people at all. I lived for landscapes. It was the birth of my daughter that transformed me overnight into a portrait photographer – suddenly I was photographing people – or one person and people with her, anyway!
Over time, that love of capturing human faces, and especially people in a loving relationship has grown to embrace paid work. I still photograph my daughter, but now she also has daughters of her own. But now I photograph other people and their children too. The wonder of human and family life, the beauty of faces at all ages and phases of life – this is my great passion with my camera, and I simply feel privileged to be paid for it.
An early conversation with my daughter
Geoff and Rachel and their boys
Perhaps the greatest joy as a professional photographer is to be invited back to photograph the same family as the years go by. A good quality record of the way your children grow, change and develop is a lovely thing to treasure. And, as a professional who is trusted repeatedly to take those photos, there is a real joy in building and maintaining a relationship with the family over time.
One Sussex family has called on my services every two years since 2010 – I count them as friends and look forward to more meet-ups in the future. Other families have started out with a family shoot or two, and the relationship has led on to my photographing a son or daughter’s wedding, years later.
One thing I have noticed is how significant a good family photographic session can be for the people involved. “These were just before Laura went off to university”, “Your photos are so precious to us – they are the last we had before James got his diagnosis” and so on. Just occasionally I have been asked to photograph families where one member is terminally ill. I count that as an incredible privilege and take the pastoral side of that very seriously.
I try to be affordable and dependable, knowing that a family photo shoot is a major expense, but also a very important investment for the future, in terms of memories and love – the stuff that really matters. Please contact me if you like my work. We can talk about costs at that point, but expect to pay from £200 for a short shoot in the home.
For that you will get a good number of selected and edited files, with full rights to print, to share and to copy as you wish. Unlike some firms where the shoot is cheap but you are fleeced for the prints, I aks for proper payment for my work, and will then help you find suitable printers, free of charge.
Longer shoots, or sessions involving significant travel, will obviously cost me. Contact me by phone or using my online form for more information.
