Why it’s so important to take family photographs at home.

During lockdown we were living in a house temporarily while I was going through an ongoing divorce nightmare type situation. We knew we wouldn’t be there for long, we focussed on the stresses of legal matters, Covid 19, home schooling, being apart from family and a home that didn’t feel our own. We took barely any pictures as I thought at the time, one day we’ll forget about all this as a bad job, and move on.

The truth is, the kids have a totally different memory of the place we called kind of home. They remember NO SCHOOL, a bouncy castle paddling pool combination - a perfect feature of the lovely large garden we had (an absolute godsend!). It was sunny everyday and Mummy wasn’t really great at home schooling as it turns out (all hail the teachers out there) which resulted in giving up at lunchtime and allowing a ‘free for all’ for the rest of the day.

We also had wonderful neighbours and the children played in the street, and in between various gardens of the families with other kids as all the parents looked after them all collectively - It takes a village. Thinking about it all now, it really WAS a wonderful time in so many ways.

The long and short of it… I WISH I took more pictures of all of this, especially for the kids to look back on - oh how I feel the guilt. Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees I guess and are so caught up in the moment that you forget to keep it for later. I for one am never going to make that mistake again that’s for sure. I just have my sieve of a memory and a few scrappy pictures on my iPhone to piece together the stories of this time.

Moral of the story, TAKE THE PICTURES even if you’re not feeling it right now, at least you’ve got them, what have you got to lose? - nothing, but you stand to gain so much! Better still, hiring a photographer (like me obviously) and allowing yourself to be documented allows everyone to get in the frame and offers you a wonderful insight into how you interact as a family from a new perspective.

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Here’s a few photographs of a wonderful recent family documentary photography session at their home. They were the funniest, kindest family on the planet for making me endless cups of tea, loads of cuddles (thanks Anni & Esta), a nerf gun fight upstairs, paint bubbles everywhere, cats, a strange lady in the garden and a Tupperware box of poo emoji cakes to take home (which I still need to return!).

Thank you Claire, Jon, Anna, Esta, Inki, Louis, and The Lady in the Garden - you were awesome!