Sometimes the best things are worth waiting for. This shoot with big sister L and new baby M was an example of that. L had been really looking forward to the photoshoot – she had even bought her own pink VTech camera along to give me a run for my money. However, when push came to shove and it was time for her to step onto the background paper she lost her confidence. She was shy and sullen and didn’t want to have her photo taken. At all. Not ever.

This is where I find being a mum helps. Usually. I went through my whole repertoire of nursery rhymes (I used to run a Mums and Tots group, I have a fairly big arsenal). We tried a drink and a biscuit. Nope. Lots of smiley pictures from baby M but L wasn’t warming to the studio at all.

This is where the fact that I tend to pencil in one and a half to two hour slots rather than the “normal” one hour slots really helps. I don’t run a cnveyor belt of clients. If I had had an hour M’s photoshoot would have stopped there and Mum would have been disappointed with lovely shots of her new baby but none of her two daughters together which she had asked for in her pre-shoot consultation.

Next we had a lookat theimages on L’s camera. It turned out she had been to Chester Zoo and loved the animals. Talking about the animals she began to thaw. We talked about all the animals we could think of. Then we introduced L to Quacky Duck who may be a soft toy but is a valued member of the Jo Belfield Photography team. L laughed A LOT at Quacky’s noisy quacking and we got some lovely images of her on her own and with baby M.

The photoshoot in total lasted 1 hour 45 minutes and through a little patience we got some great results that we loved but more importantly Mum loved too!