Good Life Portraits

The first few weeks pass like a fever dream.

You barely remember what day it is. You forget what you ate for breakfast, assuming you ate breakfast. The bub is here, smaller than you remembered them being yesterday, somehow louder, and the photos on your phone are mostly variations on the same one shot from a slightly different angle in slightly worse lighting.

The studio session is the antidote. Forty minutes where someone else holds the camera, the props, the patience. You get to actually look at this brand new person, in good light, while a stranger fusses over them gently.

A few weeks later, you walk past the wall art and remember exactly how small they were.

Dads don't get photographed enough.

Most of the family albums we look through skew one way — mum and bub, mum and the kids, mum holding it all together. Which is fair, because she usually is. But there's another version of those early weeks. Quieter. A bit more monochrome. A dad on the couch with a tiny new person against his shoulder and a guitar across his lap, just sitting in it.

If there's a dad in your life who would never in a million years ask to be photographed with their kid — book the session anyway. Chances are it'll end up being the portrait everyone goes back to.

Some moments aren't loud. They just deserve to be remembered.