Embodied Mother
A fully embodied and intimate pregnancy photoshoot at home in Devon
An intimate maternity session at home in Devon
A family Saturday at home. Slow, simple, sweet.
This autumn Sally invited me to travel to London to work with them and it was such a treat.
They wanted photos that felt truthful and told the whole story of them, to capture them as they are now as a family of three. This was such a joyful afternoon together. They played, read, nursed and danced, before making some quiet time to capture photos of Sally in the last stages off her pregnancy.
Gathering memories, tender timeless days together.
Tender, timeless on the South Devon coast
Sometimes it’s timelessness and staying out from morning to sunset. Gathering, playing, basking and making home somewhere hidden along the wilds of Devon’s coastline. Without a time frame or a fixed story in mind day leads into evening and walk and we wander through the phases the day.
A family breakfast on the moor
A gentle sun drenched morning in Dartmoor
A gentle sun drenched morning in Dartmoor, walking, cooking and gathering together, leaning into the last few weeks of pregnancy with her family, like the landscape wild and full.
Warm cinnamon smiles and hand made clothes, nourished in nature…and a little sugar. Time can stand still if we let it, that precious time just before birth.
Ordeals and Triumphs
The ordeal could come at any step in the path; conceiving, during pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding or much later. Maybe mine was in the long nights of sleeplessness and the dark days that followed, when exhaustion sat heavy on me, wearing me me down.
(And the beauty in both)
I once heard bringing babies to the world described as a quest. There will always be ordeal. And there will always be triumph.
The ordeal could come at any step in the path; conceiving, during pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding or much later.
Maybe mine was in the long nights of sleeplessness and the dark days that followed, when exhaustion sat heavy on me, wearing me me down.
I have witnessed many families in their moment of triumph, and I have also witnessed many navigating their own moments of ordeal. I see their struggle, but I see so much beauty too, so much fragility, so much truth.
Last night my boy couldn’t sleep. When I sang to him that old lullaby of ours, it took me right back to those nights. I felt a deep tugging, something inside shifted and I saw the preciousness of that time, the closeness, the impermanence. Several years later I’m beginning to see the beauty in my own ordeal.
I believe that words and photos can help us to do that. They can gently hold a moment in time that we are unable to truly see, when we are so deeply within it. I think we all need a record of our ordeals as well as our triumphs, there is so much truth to be found in both.
Welcoming Raffy, a newborn shoot in a Devon woodland
A morning spent in a quiet Devon woodland, celebrating newborn Rafferty, celebrating rediscovering new motherhood and of course, new brotherhood too. And what a sweet morning it was.
An evening by the river in Devon
This evening was all about the closeness, playfulness and love that they are. It was paddling in the river, it was arms and legs and paws tangled on the grass. It was just lovely.
