hippie family photography

The Van Daveys

I love this family. I met Hayley six years ago on top of Mt Panorama in Bathurst when she was registering downhill longboarders, including my hubby and hers, for the ASRA downhill longboarding race down the mountain. They were crazy days. She was so cool, had the best looking mohawk I’d ever seen on anyone ever and had the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. Six month old Sophia decided Hayley’s jade necklace was her new best toy and was pretty much glued to her whenever she was around, so we became friends and I’m so glad we’ve managed to stay in touch and I’ve been able to watch her and Owen marry and become really awesome parents to two of the most vibrant kids around (that Juniper is a HOOT!). Yes, I love this family and I loved photographing them A LOT! Can’t wait for the next time!

Hayley is also a fabulous artist running under the name Haeli Van Veen, do check out her work. I can’t wait to have the space and the cash to buy one of her beasts down the track.

xo

July 26, 2015

Botanic Gardens

I love the Botanic Gardens in Canberra, in fact I think they are the National Botanic Gardens. Since the creation of the Red Centre they now have it all. It’s incredible wondering between wildflowers in white sand, misty rainforests down a ravine, the red, red desert with a gigantasaurous thorny devil (not real), the Eucalyptus lawn, the prehistoric woodland, the rock garden with all the many lizards (real). I absolutely love it. These are a few pics from a recent trip. I mainly set out to photograph Soph in an outfit my sister had created. Hannah finished a Fine Arts degree in Textiles recently (her label is Asunta). She’s about to move to Melbourne to begin an intense graphic design course, but she’s made clothes for over a decade now and is really very good at it, I wanted to photograph these clothes before they lost their newness.

I also got to try out a couple of ideas, something I always love doing. I love the idea of photographing people in and around their house, I feel it allows a photograph to tell more of a story if the subject is placed in a context relevant to them.

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February 23, 2015

Wild and Free Kids

I am an advocate of children running wild and free through nature (it’s the hippie in me – thanks for that gene, mum!) and I love to watch my kids doing that too. I’m pretty happy that we managed to find this tangle of trees and plants just a hop, skip and jump away from our own home and the kids and I love to go and hang out there.

I’ve done this every year, take my children to do a photo shoot. As a mum it’s fantastic to do this, I am able to see and appreciate their incredibly fast growth year by year, sometimes us mums can miss this happening before our very eyes! And as a photographer I love to do this too. I can take as much time as I want, control the conditions (choose the day, timing and clothing…that’s as far as I can go actually!) and experiment (my kids are pretty patient with the posing!).

Here are the results. Such a privilege to watch children explore and create in their own worlds, they have such amazingly creative brains when they are young. Get your kids outside! Find a place to get muddy! I recommend it!

Blessings.

October 13, 2014

The Windhorsts

Julie got off the plane looking a million dollars. After a few weeks on the Gold Coast they returned to Canberra and I grabbed them for a family photoshoot in one of Canberra’s many parks (Canberra is a photographer’s paradise for locations, lucky city!). I’m glad they were so game to get into it. We found some beautiful spots for the children to play where I could photograph them naturally and discovered on old bridge to climb on.

Finding spots like this is a great bonus of having a photoshoot in an unexplored park.

August 27, 2014

At the Cotter

I shot Keren and her baby bump many moons ago now. That bump has revealed itself as a delightful fourth member to their little family and it was my pleasure to photograph them recently.