London wedding & portrait photographer – in Greenwich, Blackheath and Westminster

Amy & Rob’s engagement portrait session around London landmarks in the early evening included the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral and a view overlooking the Houses of Parliament. Here are more from their portrait session, after last week’s single. I SO love Amy’s cute dress and shoes that she wore despite glacial weather.  What you also don’t see from these portraits is her hot pink bag – a fab gift from her future mother-in-law.

Amy and Rob had a London portrait shoot today, capturing a number of the city’s landmarks on Valentine’s Day weekend.  They’re getting married in Houston in November and have become platinum frequent fliers staying in touch in the past two years while Rob has worked for an American firm, helping to set up its London base. We went from the South Bank Centre to St Paul’s Cathedral and on to Scott’s, where they had a dinner reservation. This is one of the last of the day, taken about three minutes before they went into dinner and the heavens opened with an icy downpour … talk about timing!

I’ve known Bronwyn since I was about 10, when our families were in the local choral society together.  We would spend our weekends ‘helping’ to paint sets, make props and bang nails into pieces of wood and many week nights with our homework in the local town hall while our parents rehearsed their singing. So it was brilliant to do family portraits of her, her husband Phil and daughters Amelia and Freyia recently at their home in West Sussex.

When I arrived, we saw the weather closing in and immediately put on boots to walk through woods near their home across a footbridge, where the girls watched passing trains.

The cloud cover gave us very gentle light for some portraits.

Amelia was very keen not to miss any opportunity to get close to the camera, even when the photographer was, ahem, ‘hidden’ in the grass.

And she was completely delighted with a tree stump just made for her to climb and play the king of the castle … although getting down took almost as much effort as getting up.

Freyia was completely chilled throughout our session, enjoying her scenic perch in the arms of either Bronwyn or Phil.

Autumn leaves – something the family is going to miss when it returns to Australia next year.

The edge of the woods had a perfect seat for a formal family portrait.

In another woodland gap, Amelia found a log to use as a horse.

Then home while Bronwyn whipped up a lemon delicious pudding (a recipe we both have and use from our school home economics classes) and Amelia and Phil entertained the rest of the household – i.e. me, with a rock chick version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Before the chefs came for more music.

I’ve just returned from a short break with family which included visiting my three-day-old niece in Gloucestershire, the daughter of my sister Kirsty. She is yet to be named, but since her grandma was visiting from Australia, there were some official portraits taken with daddy Blair and big sister Matilda Rose. I especially love the photographs of Matilda and the new arrival because my earliest memories were of meeting Kirsty, who is 3.5 years younger, wrapped in a similar cotton baby blanket when she arrived home from hospital.

Jennifer and Anthony booked two weekend engagement portrait sessions in readiness for their wedding early next month. We started at 8.30am for lovely light, meeting at a cafe in Primrose Hill. They’re so sweet together – and as Anthony is a very keen photographer himself, he found it interesting to be on the other side of the camera.

Jennifer and Anthony loved Primrose Hill’s coloured houses and relative quiet that allowed us to use it as a backdrop.

We climbed to the top of Primrose Hill for the view over London.

We took a close-up of Jennifer’s engagement ring.

And used the early morning’s light for some more portraits.

Jennifer and Anthony’s second engagement session was based around Liverpool Street station going through to Bank, as chosen by Anthony.  We had overcast and gentle skies to start – and this imposing Richard Serra sculpture.

From there we went on a walkabout, ending up at Leadenhall Market, near the site of the world’s first set of traffic lights; it was brilliant having Anthony as tour guide.

I’ve just edited Vicki and Dave’s engagement photographs from York. We went there because this is where many of their dates have been, with Dave living about an hour outside it and Vicki living in Bedford.

Because I don’t know the area, I asked for advice from a couple of colleagues in the area about the best places to go and they spent quite a bit of time pointing us in the right direction. That was incredibly helpful.

We started off in the centre of York with a doorway I’d found and loved while doing a bit of shopping.

I emailed Vicki at 1am today with a link to her and Dave’s photos – and had a reply at 2am saying how happy she was with them and would be going to bed with a smile on her face.
“Thank you so much for the link. I can only say “WOW”! You have done a fantastic job in capturing the essence of our session, especially “where’s wally in little shambles?” I loved the whole thing, whenever I look at those taken at the York Minster, I can’t helped but giggle.”

I was so chuffed she liked how they had been captured.

This was another portrait taken just off The Shambles.

Then we moved to York Minster, where Dave decided to pick up Vicki, taking her completely off guard. He’s so naughty!

After Vicki had had a chance to catch her breath, we used the minster as a backdrop for individual and together portraits.

We then used some ruins as a backdrop for what turned out to be our final portraits before the weather stopped being threatening and started raining properly.

G has just given me permission to show some of her maternity portraits taken a few weeks ago. She and her husband A took a lot of time planning their session and came in for a consultation a week ahead of their portrait session, so they could maximise their session time & best choose what to bring with them.




G brought her wedding veil, with its softness and wonderful draping qualities.

She had also raided one of my favourite Soho fabric shops for some translucent material which also draped wonderfully, giving us a range of new lines. This is my fave from this session.

You can see more maternity portraits at my London maternity portrait site.

When I suggested to Ellen & Andrew that they might like to have their engagement portraits early on a Sunday morning for great light, they very helpfully agreed. So at 8am today, we met in Hampstead to walk over the heath. They had ridden their bikes there and have been on several cycling holidays in the past, so it was entirely appropriate that the bikes had a role in some of the portraits.

We found an area with lovely backlighting and used the shadows, then walked deeper into the woods for a more lush, green background.



We had an audience for some of our shoot.

But after a short while, they lost interest.

After some more close-up protraits, we went to some quiet grassland overlooking Highgate. Our original plan was to head to Parliament Hill for the last portraits, but we got lost on the way and decided this view was better and possibly quieter anyway.

I’m looking forward to Ellen & Andrew’s August wedding at The National Theatre’s The Deck and then Regent’s College. Another bonus from today was finding out that there are branches of Euphorium Bakery and Le Pain Quotidien just near Hampstead Station and (on advice of Andrew), spotted ANOTHER Euphorium branch at nearby Belsize Park. I’m yet to meet a client who isn’t in tune with yummy bakeries. Managed to resist today but have made plans to return there with a friend who lives in North London.

Rachel and Marc are a couple I’ve known for years through modern jive dancing and now continuing through tango. They live a few hours outside London, but usually visit London for a monthly tango get-together and travel throughout the country teaching blues-style modern jive, DJing and dancing.

On one of their last trips to London, we did some studio portraits. This is how elegant they can look, in ‘dance mode’.

And this is how I usually see them – having a laugh together – when they aren’t being mobbed by other dancers wanting to take them onto the floor.