Becoming a teenager

I don't remember turning thirteen. It wasn't really a big deal to me, I had a party which I recall via photos that sit in the family album, but to me, it was just another birthday. I didn't see it as anything bigger than that. I breezed through my birthdays not thinking a great deal about my age and what each number meant and sadly didn't embrace my teenage years like I wish I should have.

My Mum however often told me about how excited she was to turn thirteen, like it was a magic number that would be the gateway to so many things she would be allowed to do. She became a teenager in the mid-sixties, a time when the fashion industry had taken London by storm with short skirts and bright colours and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had teenagers in a frenzy. She would be allowed to wear a little make-up and maybe be treated less like a child and more like an adult.

I photographed some young girls last month as a Birthday photo shoot. These 5 pretty girls aged between 11 & 13 turned up full of confidence with bags full of make up, hair straighteners, clothing options and minds full of ideas about how they would like to have their photos taken. They were fantastic, so young and fresh, but clearly so grown up and independent already.

I couldn't help thinking after the shoot, how short childhood really is. REAL Childhood, the kind where you want to play in a park, ride a bike, sing and dance without inhibitions, cuddle a teddy and have a story read before bed. My girls seem so young yet a quarter of this precious time is already over for Mercy, before she becomes a teenager.... that magic age when you won't want to be considered a child anymore...

It's why I take pictures, to capture these precious moments and hopefully somehow freeze time....

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you all had a lovely day and someone made you feel special, be that your soul-mate, your baby or maybe your Mum!

I thought it would be nice to dig through my archives and find a couple of photos that make you remember how nice it is to love and be loved...

 

 yet to be born love

baby love

 

 a mother's love

 brotherly love

 

young love 

my love (photo by Damian Bailey)

my little love's bobble hat

Tutus and Tiaras...

Little girls love to dress-up, to play make believe and to pretend to be anything that is magical, fairy-like and sparkly. For me, photoshoots aren't just about capturing a good picture of a little face, it's also about allowing children to imagine themselves as something out of a story tale.

With this in mind, I decided to create a little dressing-up haven for three little three year old girls and let them loose on my stash of pearls, tulle, faux fur and glitter.

It only took them a few minutes before all three of them were clad in net ballet skirts, tiaras and fairy wings and even with two languages to contend with, they realised that the best form of communication was to run around like fairies and giggle...

I think the pictures speak for themselves, so here are a couple from the sparkly afternoon...

We are all becoming Trendsetters.

It used to be the case that people were slaves to magazines to tell them how their house should look, or what they should be wearing. We would cut out and keep, or fold the corners over of the pages we liked and most trends would creep in slowly, stick around for a length of time, while we all gradually picked up on themes and ideas, often resulting in common resemblances in our wardrobes, in our homes and at our Weddings.

That isn't the case anymore... We have fast-moving social networking sites like Instagram, Pinterest and Blogs that are becoming daily spaces for users to refer to, in order to seek styles or possibly even set them. People are longing to be different, creating individual looks and setting trends that are quickly picked up by their 'followers', most of whom they are unlikely to even have met.

I am an avid Instagram and Pinterest user and have noticed how individuals have taken style into their own hands, becoming stylists within their own rights and clearly being rewarded with their efforts with by amount of followers they receive.

Someone recently connected with me on Instagram, remarking that she also owned the same coat, bag and little girls dress in a couple of my pictures. It was really fun to 'meet' someone who clearly shared the same choices and then look at other pictures for more inspiration.

So are you one of the 4 million users that regularly 'pin' already? Pinterst is the new social networking platform where users can create virtual mood boards 'pinning' any image they choose and then follow other Pinterest users that have images that inspire them. The topics are endless suiting any type of person that wants to organise things that inspire them; Party ideas, Weddings, Architecture, Home Decor. Collating images and building your own style within a certain topic has never been so easy. This site is not like Facebook where you follow your friends and family to see what they are up to. This is a place where you can organise your inspirations and then follow people that you like what you see and you see what they like...

Have a look and if you need an invite... let me know!

http://pinterest.com/primrosa/
http://pinterest.com/luciemilton/

To keep or delete?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2012 has arrived and I think it's going to be an exciting year... I am particularly excited this year as there are some occasions that I think are going to be quite memorable... The London Olympics will of course be a highlight, my husband has a sabbatical, so I expect we shall do some travelling, plus my children are at an age where they make me laugh every day and I hope to capture and lock the memories as best I can, before they grow up too quickly!

So of course there are going to be many many photographs! On top of this I hope to be photographing lots of other bumps and cherubs along the way. This will of course produce many GB's worth of data on my computer, limiting it's memory, so I have taken the time during these first few dull January days to have a spring clean of my hard-drive, organising my folders, backing up my pictures and deleting one or two as I go...

I have a bit of a dilema deleting pictures and I would be interested to know what other parents do with regards to deleting their family pictures. I am a horder by nature and although I appreciate a good photo, I find it very difficult to delete the bad ones. I have even kept pictures that I have taken of both my girls when they are in tears, because I just don't want to delete anything they do.

I do however look at the handful of photographs that my parents have of their own childhoods and see how precious these little printed black and white keepsakes are, primarily because they are so few. My father was a keen photographer when I was young, so I have more than a handful of pictures of my own childhood that are lovingly kept in one album, but what will my children think about the photographs of their childhood when they are older, when there really are so many and what does a parent do with the thousands of pictures that don't even make the digital books that we produce nowadays?

Clearly I have too many pictures and I made it my mission these last few days to cut down on the amount of pictures that probably won't be looked at in the future. There are different kinds of photographs that you take as a parent: The ones that are jaw-achingly gorgeous, where the smile is so big, you can hear your toddler laughing; Then there are pictures that capture memories of places you visited, people you saw and things that you did; Then there are the photos that are a bit non-descript, possibly blurred, but maybe capture a favourite toy that has since been lost, a bruised knee, a tear on a cheek or a child falling over...

On this particular note, I photographed a Christening last month and as the ceremony came to a close, the sister of the little boy that was being christened tripped at the alter and was in mid-flight as I snapped away. Whilst editing the pictures I couldn't decide whether to include this picture in the shortlist to show the client, but I decided that although it wasn't the crispest picture, it told a story that they may laugh at in later years, but if I didn't show them the photograph, they may not even recall that it had happened. Embarrassing though it may have been at the time,

So my learning has been that it's best to try and keep your selection of pictures to a minimum, but the ones worth keeping may also be the ones that tell a story or show a unique detail that you may look back on in a different light when you are 'old and grey' or greyer, if the case may be...

Is less more?

It is quite natural when taking a portrait picture, to feel the need to put the subjects face in the center of your viewfinder. We naturally see things symmetrically and assume that is the best result for a picture. For most pictures, this works and you get a pleasing result.

However sometimes, the beauty in a photograph is because some of it is missing... When I first photographed this little boy two years ago, quite by accident I took a picture where half of his face wasn't even in shot, but it was one of those pictures that didn't need any work done to it. There was no cropping that could be done, because the picture already missed half of his face. It turned out to be one of his Mum's favourites. So when I had the opportunity to photograph him again I wanted to see if we could achieve it once more.

Two years on, he is of course more active and less excited about being photographed, but none the less a joy to photograph and his gorgeous dark eyes really pop! His little sister also had a turn and I can't resist showing her picture in colour. The contrast of her beautiful blue eyes,  rosy cheeks and gorgeous strawberry blonde hair is just melt worthy.

So next time you are taking a picture, consider that if you leave something out and embrace the white space, it might give you more.

Pumpkins and Poppets

Just recently I had a photo shoot with 4 close little friends. It's great shooting children that are used to each other and clearly used to having their Mums taking their photos, as they don't have any inhibitions and it's easier to capture their personalities in a shoot

We had the run of the Music school's garden and some pumpkins as props. I had some ideas on what I wanted to do with the children and their props, but it wasn't long before the children were all so excitable that they were running around in different directions and I wasn't getting 2 children in focus, let alone 4!

So I left them to it to see what they did and they all just plonked their bottoms down on a pumpkin each and laughed. It amused me, as I hadn't thought to ask them to sit on them and had I asked them, they probably wouldn't have!

You can spend so much time preparing for a shoot and imagining what the pictures will look like and what the client might want, but what I love about photographing children is the results are often so far removed from your original vision. The more you try to encourage a child to do something, the chances are, the more they will rebel against it. However they are likely to be doing something just as cute that is still a perfect poppet moment!

Have fun carving your Pumpkins ready for next week's Halloween!