Last weekend I had the pleasure of dong a family photo session for my friend Claire from Claire Lane Photography. Claire already has tons of gorgeous pictures of her children but of course she isn’t in many of them – I am guilty of that too!

Getting some nice photos of the whole family is always a challenge and although we as photographers try our best to include ourselves in photos it is a lot easier to get someone else to do it for you. I spent Sunday morning with Claire, Rob and their children Katie and Jack in the lovely St Albans home. Katie and Jack happen to be the same age as my own children and very much used to being photographed of course! I made sure Claire was included in all my shots, I think it probably felt a little strange for her to be on the other side of the camera but she did great and the whole family was a pleasure to photograph.

Here are some of my favourites:

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Pregnancy photo sessions are amongst my favourite type of sessions: slow paced, calm and serene. Here we are waiting for Sophie and Chris’ baby due… tomorrow! Here are some photos of the beautiful Sophie, and of course I cannot wait to meet their baby.

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Baby Charlie is one of the most cheerful babies I have ever met. He greeted me with a big smile when I arrived but very often with older babies/toddlers the attention span is pretty short to say the least and they quickly want to move on to the next interesting thing (hairbrush, pen, remote control, keys, parents of toddlers you know what I am talking about!). Luckily, with Charlie, the smiles kept on coming and I made the most of it!

Thank you Charlie for being so agreeable, you were a pleasure to photograph :-)

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Sunday morning: nothing beats the smell of freshly baked croissants… This week’s theme for my project 52 is “Breakfast” but I didn’t have much time to photograph them before they were wolfed down by a certain little boy.

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You may remember my new year resolution last year of taking a photo every single day… Well I started pretty well but ran out of steam after about 6 months, it was hard work! I am so pleased to have captured a big chunk of our family life in 2011 so it was totally worth it. Setting a personal project is also a great way to practice and push yourself to try new things so I was determined to set myself another challenge this year.

This time we are doing it as a group with my photography course students, I am hoping that a bit of accountability will help me meet my goal! We have set ourselves the challenge of taking one photo per week, to follow a theme.

The theme for our first week was “Cold”. I had visions of snow, frost, mist but the weather had other plans and it’s pretty mild here in the UK for this time of year. I decided to take Emily to our local woods and thought hard about how to portray coldness/winter. I looked for bare branches, trying to avoid anything green and came across a bush with bare spindly branches, perfect! I asked Emily to step back into the bush so that I could shoot through the branches, observing the direction of the light, I made her face the sun (which was behind the clouds) to get some catchlights in her eyes. I used a cooler than natural white balance (4000K) in camera, which created the cold tones I was after for my winter picture.

As an extra bonus, there was a little bit of wind so I asked her to stay there for a couple of minutes and snapped whenever I saw the wind blowing in her hair. This one was my favourite:

Look out for this week’s photo on the blog soon, the theme for week 2 is “Breakfast” (my favourite meal of the day!).

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I am excited to be finally able to share a bunch of photo sessions which I kept under wraps until Christmas as the photos were being used for to make presents for my clients’ families.

Here is the lovely baby Lexi and her parents Liz and Adam. I didn’t have to go far for this session as they live just a 5 minute walk away from me in St Albans. Lexi hardly took here eyes off me for the full session (which was very handy!), I think she was trying to work out what it was all about! She’s just 6 months old, a really lovely age to photograph.

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This Christmas season has bit a bit of a whirlwind and I am slowly catching up with the blog! Some of you may already have seen picture from this great photography session on my facebook page, it’s about time I shared them on my blog too. A beautiful autumn morning in Holland Park with Alessia, Chris and their gorgeous children Luca and Serena.

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A while back, I donated a gift voucher for a mini session to raise money for our wonderful French playgroup Les P’tizamis. Les P’tizamis is a playgroup for French-speaking families, a great place for parents and children to get together and play, sing and listen to stories in French.

The gift voucher was won by Kitty, who was our storyteller extraordinaire. Kitty is such a character and always has amazing stories to tell, from adapted fairy tales to fascinating stories from her own family around the world. I had the pleasure of meeting her family this weekend, and particularly her lovely grand-daughter Nina who was visiting from Abu Dhabi.

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Miranda contacted me back in September to arrange a surprise family photo session as a present for her mum and dad. I had the pleasure of meeting them in their Kings Langley home and we went for a stroll in the nearby woods of Kings Langley Common.

Little Archie, aged 2, particularly enjoyed the company of his granddad (“Gan Gan”) and I loved capturing their relationship.

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This week I am donating a space for my next photography beginner class to raise money for a great charity called Centre 33, a drop-in centre for the homeless based here in St Albans. Centre 33 provide meals and hot showers throughout the year to people who are in difficulty.

The course is aimed at Digital SLR owners who would like to make the most of their camera and create beautiful images by taking control of their equipment. It is a 5-week course starting on Tuesday 21st February 2012, full details (including reviews from past students) can be found here: Photography course in St Albans

It is an ideal Christmas gift, either to treat yourself or someone close to you.

The place will be given to the highest bidder through a silent auction. The course is normally priced at £349 so please bid generously, 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the Centre.

To place your bid (or if you have any questions about the course) simply email me with your bid amount. The winner will be the highest bidder and, in case of a tie, whoever submitted their bid first. The auction will close at midnight on Wed 30th November and the winner will be announced on 1st December.

Finally, if you’re not interested but know someone who might be please don’t hesitate to pass this on or share on Facebook! You can also help the centre by volunteering or by making a donation, you can find all the details on their website: http://www.centre33.org/

Good luck and happy bidding!
Stephanie

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