A Day In Our Lives - Family Documentary Photography

People often comment to me that as a family photographer, I must have thousands of images of my own little clan. Well, whilst I have the ability to make high quality photos of them, I don't always have the opportunity. It's not just the time to capture the photos, but the post-processing, editing and then deciding what to do with them (it's too easy to leave or forget about photos sat on hard drives so I always like to print and frame my favourites).

One of the reasons I don't always take a camera on family events is the practicality of lugging my main digital SLRs around with me. The camera bodies and fast prime lenses I use are capable of producing exceptionally high quality files (in the right hands of course) but are heavy and bulky. In fact for personal work, I love to use film cameras but that's a whole other blog post which I'll save for another time.

At the tail end of Summer and after a fair few dropped hints, I took one of my work cameras on a walk over Hengistbury Head with Eve, Willoughby and the dogs. I kept it simple: one camera body and one fixed lens. 35mm is my favourite focal length and offers a really pleasing perspective that I love. It's quite wide so that you need to get nice and close for portraits, but not too wide that it distorts.

The practicalities of walking a toddler and two dogs meant that this wasn't a typical portrait shoot as I might have with a client, but it was enough to get a set of family images I am very pleased with and - importantly - make my client (wife) happy.

It's not often I'm in photos - for good reason - and I don't have many of me with Willoughby so full credit to Eve for taking this one.

I love this 'in action' shot. It now has pride of place, framed on a wall in my office.

The bench climb could have ended in tears. But didn't. So we wave at an aeroplane.

Bailey always manages to sneak into a shot somewhere. I use him as a subject quite often so he's used to posing.

Quick snooze on the way home. I'm fairly sure the graze wasn't there at the start of the walk.

Home in time for lunch and some goofing around from Mummy gets some laughs.

Fresh air, running around and now a full tummy equals a toddler ready for another nap.

Lovely light, a nice walk and some great photos we are both very happy with. I'm pleased that I gave into Eve's nagging suggestion. And the frame really does look good on my wall.