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Auckland photographer Anne Geddes revolutionised and essentially created the newborn genre as we think of it today. Like the maternity session a newborn session was unheard of a generation ago, with new parents capturing their babies with point and shoot cameras - often with unflattering results.
Photographing someone so tiny is a challenging undertaking and one I treat with great respect. I leave the props and theatre to Ms Geddes, and have a pared down organic approach. What I try to do is present new parents with a few portraits of their child, showcasing them as they are: enigmatic and awe-inspiringly beautiful.
Maternity sessions are relatively new to photography. Annie Lebowitz made the maternity photograph an actual genre when she photographed the pregnant Demi Moore in 1991 for the cover of Vanity Fair. What made her image so iconic is that it changed popular perception about the pregnant body. At a time when everything is focused on 'thin' this kind of a session makes a liberating and celebratory statement about the beauty of the female form in all her shapes and sizes.
One cannot describe the glow of an expecting family. It is like a tangible force. These sessions are fun, romantic and deeply moving.
I have always wanted to be an artist of some sort. When I picked up a camera for the first time it was initially intended as a means to another end. But the more I photographed, the more the images became the finished thing. I fell in love with the medium, the history, the masters, the work.
Visual eloquence is important to me. The portrait is fascinating. I look at the person I am photographing and wonder what is going on with them. I want to see them through the eyes of someone who loves them. Pretty soon I disappear and all that is left is the person in front of the camera.
I love going out on location. We live in such a beautiful country with abundant and diverse landscape. I delight in watching children encounter new surroundings. How they are entranced by things we take for granted.
"You know that place between asleep and awake, the place you can still remember dreaming? That's where I will always love you, that's where I will be waiting" - Peter Pan
I have a particular fondness for sessions at my client's homes. They are always unpredictable and interesting. I find shy children blossom when asked to show me their toys and the games they like to play. More outgoing children love the novelty of a grown-up coming for a play-date. I am on their turf and they are decidedly the Grand Poobah of the game.
I consider it a great opportunity to capture the family in their own space. People who find the whole process of being photographed an unpleasant prospect, relax a lot more in their own environment. I have often been greeted by someone in their slippers, the whole house chaos, having tea or small children thrust into my hands. I'm immediately adopted into the family. It makes my job so much easier, I just unclip my lens cap and enjoy the show.
A lifestyle session is different to your typical portrait session, and while I do include portraits in your collection they are more deconstructed and more about story telling and documenting you as you are and live. I typically treat home sessions in this manner, and garden sessions as a more traditional portrait session.