Oh I do love it when clients are fun and adventurous!! And this family has it in spades!!

Desere booked this photoshoot a few months ago and she was very specific about going to Newtown.  She wanted the urban vibe and mentioned using the graffiti walls… I was thrilled.

I had an absolute ball with this shoot… partly because I got to take photos where I’d been dreaming of going for ages… in the old Park station next to the Mandela bridge! Travis mentioned while we were at the graffiti walls that he’s always wanted to go into the station and he’d really love to have there photos done there, and I warned them that I didn’t think we’d be able to get in.  Every time I’d tried before, it was barricaded or swarming with security who’d turned me away.  Not this time though… the gate were open and even though we were being watched by police on the bridge (who were at a film set that was set up on the bridge), we had free reign

And it was SO SO SO worth the effort

He was stretching his dragon wings…  because he had a dragon hair style

LOL he was so cute here… trying to copy the expression of this “sad” man.  He couldn’t quite get the winking, so used his hand.  The reason his hand is on the floor is because he thought that’s where the claw would go

We had a big family Christmas like we usually do, but this year was slightly different because we spent Christmas Eve at my parent’s house with my brother’s family and then Christmas Day at my parent’s house without my brother’s family. LOL! Hope that makes some sense.

On Christmas Eve, Erin came to play for a bit at our house, and I used the opportunity to take a few photos of her for the family calendar for 2012…

And then it was time to go to my parent’s house…

And then it was Christmas morning, and surprisingly the kids only woke up at 6:30!! We had morning tea while opening Santa gifts…

And then it was breakfast time before heading for my parent’s again, for round 3 of opening gifts… where the clone suit from Elaine was the hit of the day…

And soon it was time to crack open the special champers…

And swim…

… and laze around…

And if you’re wondering what lenses I used… just my 50mm f1.4

I was so very lucky on Sunday afternoon for this photoshoot with the extended Spence family… the weather had been completely miserable all day, and it was actually drizzling when I arrived at the park, but thankfully the weather cleared and we had an awesome shoot!

It was quite critical that we got this shoot to happen this weekend, as the photos are going to be used as Christmas presents, so I’m quite grateful for the change in weather … and how cute are the 3 girls? And because these are for gifts, this is a BUMPER blog post so they can choose images for printing now… they won’t be able to wait until I deliver all the images.

I’ve known the Lockley family for very many years, so it was awesome to take their photos this weekend.  Their youngest daughter Emma, was my first newborn client, and I also took photos at her first birthday party.  I met them in the Rose Gardens at Emmerentia Botanical Gardens in Johannesburg and the girls had a ball on the various levels of the gardens and looking at all the fountains.

I went to Jacqui and Stuart’s house in Bryanston today to take photos of Oliver.  Oliver is 4 weeks old and is Rhys’ baby brother.  I took photos of Rhys when he was 9 weeks old last year May, and I’m thrilled that I got to take his brother’s baby photos too

Oliver was a breeze, and because he was very awake and not exactly new newborn anymore, I didn’t even try with the curled up photos… which made it a much more relaxed shoot for everyone.  It was a challenge to get Rhys to play along with what we wanted to do, but I like what we got  because in the end we went with what Rhys was comfortable with, and that makes for much more natural photos.

Rhys was much more interested in what was going on outside at this point…

Rhys was playing under the pillows while I was busy with Oliver… I couldn’t resist taking a few photos of him