It’s no secret that we absolutely love mother and daughter makeover sessions here.  There is just something so special about the relationship between mothers and daughters, and we always find that it is a great opportunity for them to let their hair down and just have fun.  It is also always great capturing that relationship on camera.  The funny moments, the tender moments, and if we have anything to do with it some very slightly mad moments too.

Well, last Saturday, we had the mother/daughter session that beats them all.  Susan and her three adult daughters  – Emily, Felicity and Penny came to the studio and we haven’t enjoyed taking pictures this much in ages.  As you can see from the photographs, they appeared to enjoy themselves too. 

The lovely thing to see was that these three girls were all such good friends, and great friends with their mum too.  All of them were great fun, completely charming, and a joy to have in the studio.  Oh – and they were also fantastic in front of the camera!  Please come back soon!!

 Here is what Susan had to say:

Moments-Preserved is absolutely fabulous, I went there last Saturday with my 3 daughters for an Indulgence Makeover Shoot and what an enjoyable indulgence it was, the four of us had such fun……..and the photos are fantastic.

Many of you may already have met these three, but for those of you who haven’t these are our three beautiful daughters (ok we are biased!), Olivia, Sophie and Saskia.

Every year we try to come up with a new way of photographing them for our Christmas card, and this year we decided to go for a Signature portrait, with toning and hand colouring as well.  We hope that you like the end result.  We have already had a great response from those who received the card in the post, so thank you so much!

Below are a few of the photographs from the session that we passed over in favour of the image above.  It was a very difficult choice, but we feel that the chosen image absolutely captures their personalities.

Here at Moments-Preserved we are lucky enough to have known Rowan and Morna for some time, and they have been to the studio before which always helps.  They came to us with their mum for some portrait photography a few days ago, and these are the results.

These two get on like a house on fire and their fantsatic relationship shows through in these pictures.  This portrait session was a breeze as we did not have to encourage either of the girls to demonstrate their affection – it just happened.  The cuddles weren’t contrived, they were natural.  We particularly like the way Rowan, the older of the two girls threw her arms round Morna – it is a beautiful picture.

Anyone who has read any of our blog will know that we believe that eyes are the most important element of any portrait photograph and we think you’ll agree their eyes are pretty amazing !   Their mother was delighted with the results and

Tommy is a little boy that we are fortunate enough to see almost every day as his parents own a wonderful cafe almost opposite our studio in Edinburgh.  When you visit us, we strongly recommend that you pop in there for a coffee (the best in Edinburgh!) and the most authentic panini outside of Italy.

Anyway, as you can see, Tommy is a pretty good looking little boy, and so when his Dad brought him in for some portrait photography as a suprise birthday present for his Mum, we jumped at the chance to photograph him.

This was one of those effortless sessions that just went to plan.  Of course it helped that we knew Tommy.  It only took a little teasing about his future as a footballer  for Italy to get those cheeky smiles out of him, and then the bonus came – those piercing eyes straight at the camera!  Tommy – thanks for making our life so easy.

Tommy’s mother was absolutely delighted (we understand tears were involved!) and the framed portrait went straight up in her bedroom.  Even she could not believe his eyes !

This is Peter, Jamie and Louisa – three great kids from Edinburgh  that popped in with their Dad to have a family portrait for their Mum’s birthday.   We understand that she was so pleased with her present that dad had to hang it there and then.  We did tell him that we offer a hanging service!

The kids had a great time and of course that always shows in the photos.  No inhibitions, just great smiles.  Little Louisa who was just four was the best poser ever – she is definitely destined for a career in modelling!

Scarlett came to us with her parents Jane and Geoff to have her portrait taken as a present from mum to dad.

Appropriately, she came derssed in……well, scarlett.  Given the significance of the colour in her little life, we thought this a perfect opportunity to show to Jane and Geoff what we can do with hand colouring.   Many of the images from this session were either hand coloured, or taken completely back to black and white before we added the colour back to Scarlett’s dress.

We were particularly happy with the photographs of Geoff and Scarlett and Jane and Scarlett seperately.  Both capture the love of Scarlett by her parents.

This is little Daniel who was brought into the studio one chilly afternoon by his doting grandparents.  The portrait session was to be a surprise Christmas present for their daughter and son in law.

Daniel was a bit reluctant to start off with, but between us, and with some very hands on help from Grandpa and Grandma, he soon got into the swing of things and delivered us some angelic smiles, giggles and glances, all of which we were fortunate to capture.  Grandma and Grandpa came back for their viewing and told us off for taking too many great photos.  We are always glad to get complaints like that

We understand that the final framed photograph was delivered at Christmas to Daniel’s very grateful parents, and Grandma wrote to us to thank us for looking after Daniel and coaxing some fantastic photographs out of him.  We loved meeting him, and hope to see him again when he is a bit older!

This is Max, five months old and one of the cutest baby boys that we have ever met.  Max came to us for his first baby portraits with his lovely parents Barry and Nicola.

Max was an incredibly placid little boy, and a very co-operative subject. 

One of the things about baby photography is that howver experienced you are, you can’t plan how a portrait session will go.  We started late morning, and about three quarters of an hour into the session, he got rather hungry, so we stopped to let him have lunch.  It turned out to be one of the longest sessions we have ever had with a baby as after his lunch he had an hour nap!.  He woke up totally refreshed, and we carried photographing him for about another hour.  Some of the loveliest pictures that we took at this session were of Max asleep in his father’s arms.

The portrait of Max staring straight into the camera with those piercing blue eyes is undoubtedly going to become one of our favourite baby portaits of all time.  Nicola and Barry were “wowed”, and are looking forward to a very large canvas hanging on their wall – so is everyone else who has seen the picture.

This session was proof (if it was needed), that mum’s cherish photographs of their children whatever their age.

Chris brought her two grown up children , Lee and Kelly to us for portraits of the three of them separately and together.  She told us that the children were now living in dofferent parts of the country, and she just wanted to try to get one more set of photos of the three of them together.  She was specific that she wanted photographs that captured the relationship between the three of them, which was obviously great.  Hopefully, we followed her brief and did our job.

We think that the photograph of Chris with her son, Lee, is one of the most tender that we have ever taken.  It is often particularly hard with adults to capture relationships and personalities when you spend only an hour or two with your clients, but that was not a problem in this session. 

Charlie and Emily were two of the cutest kids we haver ever met.  They had spent a good part of their little lives in the States (although they are English) and sadly for us, they have now returned there.

The image above of the two of them together has become one of our all time favourites, as have the photos of Charlie with his father, Gavin.  This is the father son relationship caught on camera.

Charlie and Emily were just themselves in the studio, Charlie slightly more shy and Emily more playful, but always the older sister.  These photos absolutely captured their personalities, and mum and dad were delighted.