The lovely thing about coming back

There is something very special about photographing the same people more than once.

I first photographed Erica and David when they got married. Then they came back when their first little girl arrived. And now, a few years further along, there are four of them. I think this might be one of my favourite parts of doing this work. You get to see people’s lives change.

Z standing in soft afternoon light with flowers in her hand.

Little people move super quickly this frame was snapped in a second - sun flare and soft background make this image so dreamy.

Not in some grand, dramatic before-and-after way. More in the ordinary, lovely way life actually unfolds. Two people become three. Three become four. Someone who was once the baby is suddenly the big sister with sparkly gumboots, a lot to say and her own very definite ideas about proceedings.

And somehow, in amongst all of that, the photographs start to become more than photographs from individual sessions. Together, they become a record of a family growing up. That is the part I really love.

Erica and David are also just ridiculously lovely to be around. There is such an easy warmth between them and their girls, and you can see immediately how adored those children are. There is laughter, cuddling, carrying, wrangling, a bit of swinging upside down and the usual small-child chaos that makes these sessions infinitely better than everyone standing neatly in a row.

Because that is never really what I am looking for anyway. Of course we make a few photographs where everyone is together and, by some miracle, looking roughly in the same direction. Those matter too. But I am just as interested in the way a little girl leans into her mum, the look between a dad and his daughter, a baby being held up into the light, a hand wrapped around someone much smaller.

The things people do with one another when they stop thinking quite so much about the camera. Family photographs become strange little time capsules that way.

Right now, these are simply photographs of life as it is. But in five years, ten years, twenty years, the tiny details will start doing something else. The curls. The gumboots. The baby cheeks. The eyelashes against soft skin. Small hands tucked in big hands. Who could still be picked up. Who wanted to sit where. The way everyone fitted together at that particular point in time. That is why I think it is worth coming back.

Family of four sitting together outside in a relaxed portrait.

Not because every year needs to be documented perfectly. It doesn’t.

But because life changes so quietly that sometimes you do not realise a chapter has finished until you are already well into the next one.

And I feel very lucky when families like Erica and David’s trust me to keep adding to that record. Wedding day, first baby, second baby, and whatever comes next. That feels like a pretty lovely body of work to be making.

Erica & David together outside in a relaxed portrait.

If you have been thinking it might be time to update your family photographs, you do not need a milestone or a perfectly behaved household to make it worthwhile. Come as you are. We will make something that actually feels like you.

-Georgie

“The photos are amazing, thank you so much. It's been lovely looking back at Z’s photos and comparing the girls. 

We wouldn't want anyone else capturing our special moments on camera.” - Erica & David