Family session

With small children the usual advice about golden hour is wrong. Late afternoon has the better light and the worse mood, and the mood wins every time: a session at six in the evening with a tired three-year-old produces forty photographs of a tired three-year-old. Mid-morning, before the nap and before the heat, is less flattering on paper and far better in practice. This is the one service in this catalogue whose hour is set by the youngest person present.

Seventy-five minutes at one location, without moving, is the other half of it. Children need about twenty minutes to stop performing, and a session that spends that time in a car between two places never gets past the performance. One place, no rush, and enough frames that the good ones are not an accident — forty edited photographs, delivered privately within 48 to 72 hours, and the session is rescheduled at no cost if the weather turns.

Nobody needs new clothes for a family photoshoot. Choose two or three colours that work together across everyone, and leave out large logos and printed slogans, which pull the eye in every frame they appear in. Children are best in clothes they can run, sit on the grass and get dirty in. Bring a snack and a drink, but not sweets as a reward for keeping still — keeping still is not the point. The location is chosen for where you live: a park, the edge of a wood or a riverbank you can reach without a long drive.

From enquiry to gallery is a short path. Tell us through the form roughly when and where, and we call or write back with a fixed price, usually within a few hours; asking costs nothing and commits you to nothing. You may use the photographs privately without restriction, print them and send them to grandparents. With children our line is simple: nothing is published without the parents’ express written consent, and from about fourteen we ask the young person as well, not only their parents.