April 8, 2014

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For some reason, clouds followed me when I shot these family portraits at Sydney Park with Nicole and Jason. I photographed their wedding back in 2009, they’ve since added two lovely boys to their family.

What’s even more unusual is that the clouds followed us on their wedding day too – we only narrowly escaped rain at the ceremony, snuck out for some beautiful sunshine at Observatory Hill for some location shots, before getting rained in at the reception! The good news is that the rain held off until we were driving home after shooting their family portraits.

Sydney Park has such a variety of backgrounds, looks, and textures that can be used for family portraits. I loved this steel sculpture in the centre of the park, and Nicole and Jase loved it in the background of their feature family shot, as well as the texture behind their boys in these really contrasty black-and-white’s:

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As much as I love portraits of children looking at the camera and smiling, the story of the boys playing with each other is such a great addition to the overall collection. Here, the boys play with rocks, sticks and dirt under a gorgeous tree. Don’t you just love the peacefulness and calm of this image?

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I don’t like leaving kids in a screaming heap for Mums and Dads to deal with at the end of the shoot. Being a Dad myself, I have a really good understanding of when I can push a tiny bit more for a shot I want to get, or when I need to back off and call it a day.

For this shot below, we were nearing our “expiry” with the youngest son, but I felt like there were a few more smiles left in him, and I really loved this setting. Fortunately, I was able to get the shots I wanted before the kids both wiped out with the afternoon hungry-tireds. This is one of Nicole and Jason’s favourite family images from the shoot:

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