These two are magical together. You can see it in the way they look at each other, anticipate each others responses and in the way they laugh wholeheartedly together. Chantelle and Simon and I enjoyed a wintery afternoon in South Perth and although I thought we were going to be rained off a couple of times, the weather gods smiled upon us and perhaps laughed along for the few hours we spent together. You can’t help it around these two – its infectious.
Tristan and Andrea are my first official couple for this wedding season; they are getting married next month and I for one, am looking forward to it. Here are just a couple of my favourites from their portrait session as we visited the Gnangara Pines and Hillary’s boat harbour.
Today is a little different. Today I share with you an image with me not behind the camera, but in front of it.
As my Mum’s 60th birthday was approaching for July, we decided as a joint birthday gift we would arrange for a family portrait session. This was something in the back of my mind for a while as it has been about 15 years since our last family portrait.
In addition, our family has grown in size. Having pretty much all of my extended family overseas, it was always just the 5 of us here in Australia – my parents, and my brother and sister and me. Now there are 11 of us and it was high time for us to be documented and celebrated in honour of Mum’s birthday.
So without hesitation I contacted my friend and colleague, Samm Blake, to see if she was up for the challenge of photographing our crazy family. I was floored by the end result and Mum was over the moon with her album we created for her birthday.
I thought I would share just one image from the session which is the first family portrait of my new family. These are the people I spend my days with, laugh with, cry with and live for. It is something I will treasure forever no matter what the future has in store for us or what has happened to us in the past. This is us. Right now. The start of our own story.
Thanks Samm 
While newborns are still a learning curve for me, I always arrive at a session ready to set aside up to 5 hours if need be to allow for feedings, nappy changes and a little “diva” behaviour. However at just 6 days old, little Tabitha was a photographers dream. So much so that I had finished the session in record time because she was so peaceful and quiet. Come to think of it, I don’t think she fussed one little bit. She has set the bar pretty high for all my future newborns. Oh, and she’s pretty darn cute too.
Yes, the bar is very high
A few months ago I was contacted about doing a family portrait session. Our schedules weren’t really meshing as we tried to figure out the time and place to do the shoot around Perth. It looked like by the time we finally got together all the autumn leaves would have gone leaving a rather barren landscape. So when they mentioned they were going to Broome at the end of July we decided it was a brilliant opportunity to utilise one of the most famous holiday spots in Australia as the backdrop for their images.
For this particular session, we decided to hang out on Cable Beach an hour or two before sunset while making sandcastles, searching for shells and jumping in the warm waves before running away from the “crocodiles”.
It doesn’t get much better than this
Its been a while since the girls have been on the blog. I have been wanting to update for a while but each time I did they were laying horizontal and were completely uninteresting to anyone except us who oooh and ahhh over every cute they do.
I would love to update you on their adventures and say that they have been having an excellent and exciting winter but then I would be lying. In fact, they have been hibernating like bears and sleeping in unison for what seems like months. I know Lily is dreaming of sunshine, large fields of grass and chasing balls and Lulu is in desperate need of a haircut and much needed exercise (much like her mother). Bring on Spring.
