It took a few attempts to get a suitable date, but we eventually managed a couple of hours in a nearby park photographing Pete and Clare's children. We were even lucky to get nice weather and pretty good light (brilliant sunshine might be nice and cheery, but it is brutally harsh for outdoors portrait photography with active kids).
It didn't take the kids anytime to find the river (they'd been to the park before) and Mo was soon exploring how far out he could get jumping from rock to rock. Jesse, Geni and Reilly weren't quite as adventurous (but also stayed drier). The two boys were pretty unconcerned (and uninterested) in being photographed, but it turns out that Reilly is the poser (no real shyness) and Geni is the performer (with an initial hint of shyness). Jesse doesn't feature as much early on much because he was further away or kept his back to the camera.
Mo Playing in the river
Geni playing at the riverside
Reilly by the river
Mo and Jesse in the park
The Stubbs kids in the park
Geni in the park
None of these are particularly posed - we let them run free (and occasionally called for their attention to the camera, but never for a "smile"). Photographing four of them has it's challenges and I'm sure that there are lots of moments and expressions that got missed. There are only two shots that I consider posed or setup - all four of them on the swings (not shown here) and all of them together up the tree - that took a bit of left-a-bit, right-a-bit directions to get them in to places where they were all visible.
This was a short session of just a couple of hours - shorter than I'd normally suggest for an environmental children's photography session, but Jesse had a previously arranged sleep-over at a friends and (lovely as they are) there was no way we were taking the others home with us!
A normal ½ day family photography booking is between three and four hours and a full day runs from when we start until their batteries run down. In this case, four active children for two and a bit hours still offers plenty of shots to fill an album.
Pete and Clare are also pretty conspicuous in their omission - they were content to stay out-of-the-way of the camera and let me concentrate on photographing the children.
Nobody got particularly dirty (or wet) - including me 😀
Get in touch to make a booking for me to photograph you and your family.