leavy photo

The Portrait Studio

Time passes so fast! I love to capture little moments that will make you smile when you look back at them in years to come.

A good portrait is not just a record of how someone looks, it should capture the unique emotions and personalities of your children or loved ones.

So how do we capture the personality of a child or family group within the confines of the portrait studio? It takes time, patience and a secret ingredient (jellies). Here's some samples in case you missed them...

Portraits are carried out in the comfort and privacy of my purpose built Studio in Portarlington. The studio is attached to my home, this allows for a much more relaxed enviroment than is possible with a high street store lacking the neccessary privacy which my clients appreciate. It also means I don't have to work sessions rigidly to the clock, if your family or child needs a little time to settle in before the photo session, it's not a problem.

And the jellies mentioned above are important too! or at least the idea of them is (I won't send your baby home dosed on sugar!), essentially to get good images of children parents need to approach the photo session as a fun play time rather than a rigid appointment within which we need to take photos, and so the photographer (me hopefully!) needs to take the same approach. Asking your child to smile for the camera rarely results in a natural image, you just need to take the time to let their personalities come through naturally.

With newborn babies the most essential element for success is to have the portrait done within their first two weeks, after that the small people get a little more alert and can be harder to settle. Most newborn sessions I do are scheduled before the baby is born, of course we cant say exactly when that will be but I'll have on my calendar to expect a call 'soon', once the babies arrive it's harder for parents to plan anything other than the next sleep! so if we've pre-planned the photo-shoot it's one less to have to think about.

Of course its not all babies and children, I often have grandparents 'sent' to the studio for portraits by their children or grandchildren who want to mark a special anniversary or event, jellies work really well here too.

It's good to do a planning session a few days before your portrait session. This is a good time to look at some framed portraits on the walls here and think about what you'd like to have on your own walls later. I also go through some styling ideas on what works well with clothes and colours to waer on the day.

So if all the talk of jellies doesn't have you running to the dentist instead of for a portrait, your welcome to call in to the studio and we can have a chat about capturing those memories for you.