Extended Family Portraits at Royden Park
Adjacent to Thurstaston Common, Royden Park is an idyllic location for family photography sessions! It has a brilliant mix of woodland, wetland, meadows and open areas where children can play freely and families can enjoy a picnic on a sunny day! There are so many natural backgrounds to inspire different photographs and it inevitably changes through the year.
Having photographed their wedding back in 2011, Anna & John got in touch with me to ask whether I would photograph their whole family to mark John’s parents’ Ruby wedding that year!
It makes me feel so happy when past clients get in touch to invite me back to photograph the next stage in their story. Last time I photographed this family Anna and John were at the very beginning of their journey together and so catching up with them all again 13 years on and all their children was just lovely.
A Ruby wedding anniversary is without doubt a milestone worth celebrating with beautiful family portraits! To reach 40 years of marriage is an achievement in itself, but to be this happy together after all that time is just bloody brilliant. John parents were married the same year as mine and so I had an inkling into what it meant to them to celebrate with the family they’d created together.
The kids loved exploring all the woodland dens in Royden Park and could have played for hours I’m sure! Unfortunately for them my 400 ISO film was telling me to search for more light, so we pressed on.
Formal family portraits get a bed rep, but they were important in this family session. With all sorts of different family configurations it was important to document the children with their parents, with their cousins, with their grandparents, with their great aunts etc. These are the classic mantlepiece photographs we tell ourselves we don’t want because they’re not “natural”, but in my experience when they’re done well they almost always become family favourites and stand the test of time.
It was such a pleasure to capture this moment in time for Anna, John and their wider family. How often do we have beautiful portraits taken with our children AND our parents, aunts and uncles?!
I’d argue not often enough.
If you’d like to have a multi-generational portrait session with your family in 2025, I’d love to help!
