The Mason’s are very good friends of ours and as it was Suzie’s birthday two weeks ago, we celebrated with a family portrait shoot. It was also an opportunity to take the first official photos of daughter, Serena without her braces on! We took the photos at their house, some in the garden and some in the main bedroom where the light was really good.
Photographing more than one person at a time is always a challenge as someone will invariably be looking away or blinking, the way to overcome this is to get everyone laughing and shoot the natural expressions as they appear. I always aim to capture personality in the photographs I take by letting people relax and do their own thing during a shoot rather than posing them too rigorously. Including animals in a photo shoot adds an extra fun factor as they rarely cooperate without coercion, however, Raisin and Thuli were very well behaved! Sadly, the same can’t be said of my dogs. We got lots of giggles when my little Dachshund, Jeremy, gate crashed some of the pictures before sitting on the reflector when he’d had enough! The phrase, “Never work with animals or children”, keeps coming to mind but I enjoy the challenge too much!!