Can you imagine being the parents of five (yes, five!) girls aged between seven and fifteen. Parenting them might be a small challenge (!) but photographing them in their amazing back garden was a walk in the park, almost literally!

I love photographing families in this environment. Capturing a combination of natural shots where the children are playing and then the eye-to-camera shots where they know they’re being photographed works really well.

Here, we also have a great combination of happy faces and beautiful lighting. What a perfect afternoon!

I hand-delivered Kathy and Simon’s family photographs yesterday afternoon and was really touched at the response from them. “Simon, the photos are gorgeous. You’ve really captured the children so well, and the ones of us all together are just fantastic. Thank you so much.”

But what really staggered me was their gift to say thank you. Their Christmas hamper for me consisted of red wine, white wine, cider (these guys must know me!), cheese, ‘Reindeer Poo’ & ‘Robin Poo’ chocolates(!), jams, honey, biscuits, lemon curd, and a decent supply of marshmallows. The Jones family will be indulging in luxury foods between now and Christmas – come and join if you also want to join a gym in the New Year!

It’s so good to get amazing feedback from clients and it’s one of the reasons I love my job so much!

It was great when Kathy and Simon called me and asked for some relaxed family photographs in time for Christmas, mainly because their daughter has the most amazing blue eyes I’ve ever seen! The family travelled up from Somerset in November but we needed to reschedule to make way for some seriously heavy rain. So our second attempt was just before Christmas, and the weather was perfect!

To get the relaxed, informal look that Kathy and Simon were keen on, we all decided to take a walk around the Roman walls at Silchester. This meant their children could play (perfect for Delilah) or beat things with a stick (perfect for Harry!) and everyone could have fun.

Later this month, the whole family moves to Brunei for a two year work contract and I know they’ll all have an amazing time out there. Just wondering if I should use that as an excuse to travel to the Far East again for a photogaphy trip. Now, there’s an idea!

Maddie and Owen are gorgeous! They’re also really great fun so I was chuffed to bits when Zoe and Steve called and asked if I could take some photographs for the walls of their new house.

Sometimes I’ll use studio lights for these kinds of photographs but not this time. Each of these was shot using the natural light coming in the window of the spare bedroom at their house. This meant that Maddie and Owen were completely relaxed in their own surroundings so it was easy for them both to appear perfectly natural.

It was also funny to get some great expressions from Maddie in the last two photographs. She does her ‘cheeky little monkey’ look very well. I think she gets it from her mother… :-)