FAMILIES

One of our favourite things to do, as a family, is travel. While I’d love this to mean regular overseas vacations, in reality it sometimes means just a road trip to the other side of Melbourne. When we do occasionally go international, or even interstate, we’re not ones to put our feet up by the pool sipping on margaritas and milkshakes all day. We like to get out and explore, usually on the road least travelled by tourists. When closer to home it might involve trying an activity we’ve not yet experienced, or repeating a regular one in an unfamiliar town or suburb. You have no idea how many playgrounds there are in Melbourne! But otherwise you might find us practicing archery in our ‘front yard’, which is just over an acre and heavily treed (perfect for losing arrows in), on the flying fox or trampoline, tending the veggie garden or, not often enough, in the hammock with a good book and a cider. This is what we as a family look like, most days.

The trick, I’ve found, to getting the most out of your family portrait session is to think about what your family looks like on an average day. Probably not a school day, because we know how crazy they can be, but when you hang out together and do the stuff that makes you happy. If ten-pin bowling’s your thing, I’m willing to don some oversized, underfashionable shoes and get right in there with you, capturing your eight year old’s first strike. If hiking through the rainforest a short drive from home, and stopping for a picnic along the way, is where you find your happy place – me and my camera are there. I’m especially there if you’re the ultimate family, spending your Saturday afternoons wandering from quaint but trendy coffee shop to coffee shop, visiting the odd thrift store and ice-creamery in between. Even if you’re like me, and secretly a homebody at heart, content to simply be surrounded by the people and things that make your house a home, I’m more than happy to pop over for a cuppa and an hour or two of getting to know you through my camera. I’m all about keeping things simple and true to who you are.

Even though I wouldn’t put myself in the ‘lifestyle photographer’ box, I do love being able to capture glimpses of peoples lives, and the style in which they live them. Because, hey, we’re all so remarkably unique as families, all kinds of likes and dislikes, interests and personalities thrown together under one roof. Which means no two families are ever the same, so neither should your photos be. I know that sounds cliché, but that’s where my heart is at. When I put your family album together, not only am I thinking what a really cool thing it will be for your one-day grandkids, and maybe their grandkids, to look through, but for it to mean anything to these future generations it needs to tell them who you are, and what makes you so wonderfully different from every other family out there.  Because you are, and that needs to be celebrated, and remembered.