When A Picture Paints A Thousand Words.....

....we leave them to speak for themselves. These photos are precious. We were delighted to photograph Phil and Marysia's fabulous wedding at Ripley Castle just over two years ago now. Not long after the family moved overseas as Phil is in the forces and was called to serve his country in Afghanistan. Then earlier this year baby Amelia Rose made her entrance into this world....just three hours after dad Phil made it home on leave. Time was all too short and he soon had to return to his active service. Once again on annual leave Phil and Marysia managed to squeeze in a flying visit to our studio for some family portraits. We hope you like them as much as we do - we know how special they are....and by that we don't just mean the picutres!

Book Project - Important Ordering Information

For anyone wanting to ensure copies of the book before Christmas you need to be ordering pretty quickly! We ordered our copies on the 1st November and they are estimated delivery 12th November. They were shipped from the US and currently clearing customs at Stanstead. To avoid disappointment, please don't leave it until last minute!

Portrait Of A Generation by Andy Hopkinson & Sharon Malone : The Portrait People | Make Your Own Book

Our First Book Is Published and Ready To Order!

We've finally finished the Candlelighters book and it can be viewed and ordered from the blurb website using the link below. We didn't get enough response through to enable us to have the book printed and published in Asia in bulk as we had originally hoped but didn't think it was appropriate to keep those who have particiapted waiting any longer whilst we tried to get more families through. So the cover price of the book is more than we had originally anticipated. To compensate for this however we have included a lot more than one photograph of each child or family and we hope that you will agree that this is a lovely book to own and perhaps give to a loved one for Christmas - we know we've ordered a few copies for our own family Christmas presents.

We hope you like it! We're really pleased with it. Thanks to all those who participated and who helped along the way.

Here's the link:

Portrait Of A Generation by Andy Hopkinson & Sharon Malone : The Portrait People | Make Your Own Book

Candlelighters Book Project - Exciting News!

The book is written, designed and going into production! We're hoping it should be ready to purchase within the next two weeks.

It's been a long haul for us with a lot of mixed feelings about this project but the families we have met and photographed along the way have been lovely - thank you. We didn't have as much response as we had hoped to the project despite spending an awful lot of our own resources, besides the giving of our time etc. on PR, Postcards and posters printing, advertising.

More news on this later though!

Watch this space and we'll update it with ordering details very shortly.

What A Little Cutie! Our Latest Newborn Photo Shoot

We had the absolute pleasure of photographing little baby Reagan in our studio this week. Reagan is only a few weeks old and I'm sure you'll all agree she's a little cutie!

Reagan's mum - actually it's "mom" because she is from the states Candice was very well prepared for the shoot and came along with the most beautiful little headband and hat that she had been sent from a photographer friend in the US.

Newborn and baby photography in the US is big business and I have to say we are very influenced by the best of them. When it comes to using props such as crochet hats and baskets, cocoons, even slings like the stalk may bring the US photographers are streets ahead of us over here in the UK. In fact it's rather diffult to source good props over here in our experience - for our baby hats we have had the pattens sent from the US and had one of our grannies make them for us!

We hope that we can make a difference to how babies are photographed over here. We have changed the way we shoot newborn sessions so that they take a lot longer (usually around 2 - 3 hours) and during the shoot the baby will be awake, sleep and generally very chilled out. The whole experience is designed to be minimum of stress and maximum of pleasure for the parents. We hope that Candice and Dad Jake found this to be the case for little Reagan's photo session.

So - on with the pictures! The three we've selected here are three of our favourites but the whole shoot can be viewed on the slideshow.

Apologies if any You Tube ads come up along the bottom of the show - just click them away if they do!

We wish Candice, Jake and Reagan well and look forward to welcoming them all back to our studio for more photos as the family grows!

Babies In Hats!

Inspired by my all time favourite baby photographer from the US, here's a few recent pictures of our latest craze - "Babies In Hats".

Our Very Last Book Project Shoot - Fountains Abbey

I've been so looking forward to sharing these pictures from Fountains Abbey. We had a really nice time shooting them with Amy and her family. It was a glorious hot day and as it was half term we took our new grand daughter - who was only 10 weeks old along with her mum and Uncle/my son together with a picnic. We sent Andy on ahead of us to meet up with Amy as it was so hot and we followed to arrive roughly at the time we expected him to have finished with Amy.









It was a great afternoon except for the fact that we had another shoot booked in after Amys (Amy was booked at 1pm with the second shoot being booked at 3pm). Unfortunately the second shoot family didn't turn up. So we walked around the grounds of the Abbey looking for them for an hour in the seering heat, thinking we had missed them and then went to get everyone ice creams to cool off before finally giving it up as a bad job at 4.30pm.

All of the money donated in lieu of the shoots has gone directly to Candlelighters. When the book is printed we will have paid for all the design work, layout and production costs of the book - so the more pages that have been purchased the more money this has cost us to do.

When people don't show or cancel a shoot at the eleventh hour it is not only Candlelighters that lose out on the lost donation but in real terms it actually costs us quite a lot. Our time to us is money. The chances are that another family would have wanted that appointment slot - we are very busy with appointments and half term weeks are always premium booking times. We have things to do all the time and sometimes work silly hours just to keep on top of the workload so to give the time freely and then have something like this happen is a double whammy.

We have learnt one or two hard lessons along the way with this project and although it's with regret we will not be running any similar projects in the forseeable future. Charity, as they say, really does begin at home.

Candlelighters Book Project Now Closed

Well we've finally done our last ever shoot for the Candlelighters book project. It was last Wednesday at the beautiful Fountains Abbey, near Ripon. I will be blogging some pictures from that shoot as soon as the family concerned have viewed them.

We're just finalising where to get the book from since it will be much smaller than we had originally anticipated and had quotes for. As soon as we know more we will be contacted the families who joined us in our efforts to raise money for Candlelighters with details of how to order the book. I will also be blogging on here details of the book once we know more.

Meanwhile here are some of Andy's favourite pictures from a recent shoot at Knaresborough Castle:

This Is What Happens When People Talk....

....we get more bookings! The phone rang....the voice on the other end said "You have just taken some pictures of my friend and her family and I'd like to book in too...." We love it when this happens (obviously!) because these are the best bookings to have. Not only have the come from a personal recommendation but it means that the person coming for the portraits already know what our style is like and they like it. In this instance Karen and her family are friends with Mandy in the previous post.

I love the following two shots, not only because of the symmetry in them but also because they really shows how well matched Karen and her husband are - right down to the shoes on their feet! Who says being a great photographer is down to people watching? It's a lot more than that....you could say it starts from the bottom up!