Growing up, my home was full of albums. My mum was one of those people who always had a camera in hand - at birthday parties, on holiday, on completely ordinary Sundays that didn't seem worth documenting at the time. And after every roll of film she'd get the prints made and sit down at the kitchen table to arrange them.
Those albums still exist. Some of them live in my house, and some on a shelf at her house, and when I visit I sometimes pull one down and flick through it. I show them to my kids and point at photographs of a version of me they've never met. Me as a toddler. Me on my first day of school. Me on family holidays where everyone's wearing something slightly embarrassing (hello, crazy nineties!).
I didn't know, back then, how much those albums would matter.
Here's what I know now, as a photographer and as a mum: we are living through the most photographed era in human history, and somehow our children will have less to hold onto than I did.
Not because we love them less or we're not paying attention. But because the photos are in our phones, and phones get lost, broken, upgraded, wiped. The photos exist (thousands of them!) but they live in a format that is one technical glitch away from gone.
And even when they're perfectly preserved digitally, they're rarely seen. They compete with notifications and emails and everything else that lives on a screen.
I'll be honest with you: I'm not great at printing my own children's photos. I have every intention of doing it. I think about it often. But life is busy, the right moment never quite arrives, and the photos stay exactly where they've always been - on my phone, on my laptop, living their small digital lives.
What I wish is that someone would just do it for me. Choose the best images, put them in order, make something beautiful and hand it to me so I could put it on a shelf and forget about it until the day one of my kids pulls it down.
That's exactly what I now offer my clients.
After every session - whether that's an in-home newborn shoot, a maternity session in the park, or a family afternoon in your garden - you'll receive a gallery of images that capture exactly who your family is right now. Real moments. Ordinary ones that will one day feel extraordinary.
And now, if you'd like, I can take those images and turn them into a layflat photo book. I design it. I choose how the story flows from beginning to end. I order it and have it delivered to you.
You just put it on the shelf.
The album is a classic 10×10 layflat format - the kind where the pages lie completely flat when you open it, so nothing gets lost in the spine. The cover is simple and neutral, with your family name or a short title embossed on the front. Smaller companion albums are also available, which a lot of families choose for grandparents.
It won't sit in your downloads folder. It won't wait until you have time. It will simply exist - on your shelf, in your home, ready to be picked up on a quiet Sunday, or by small hands that will one day want to know what you all looked like when they were very small.
If you've had a session with me and you're curious about the album, just reply to your gallery email or send me a message. I'm happy to talk through what's involved.
