Way back in March, I held a family portrait giveaway on my Facebook page. I do that sometimes – have competitions and stuff – on my Facebook so if you haven’t “liked” my page yet, go do it now! The lovely family you see below was one of the winners of this giveaway, and we caught up to make some lovely sunny memories after rescheduling due to bad weather TWICE. Anita is half of the dynamic duo that make up Paper Dolls – The Lost Art – masters of amazing custom stationery, invitations and papercraft, and you should definitely check them out if you like pretty things (and honestly, who doesn’t like pretty things?)

I hope these photos bring some warmth and love and sunshine into your day!

But I do know when I’ll be back again. I’ll be back in July. Never fear!

Travelling is a huge passion of mine, and I’m lucky enough to be doing a lot of it this month! June will see me hit the big smoke in Melbourne, a music festival in Bundaberg and an island wedding in Fiji – but it won’t see me at my desk, answering emails, anywhere near as much as usual so this is just a heads up for you, my lovely website-reader-er!

I’ll be back (in black, if you will, like ACDC, or in town like Thin Lizzy, or at your door like Maroon5 or just back back back back like SHINee) in early July and getting stuck straight back into it! Huzzah!

If you do need to get in touch with me before then, email is definitely the way to go (or the form on my contact page right here) and I promise I’ll get back to you as soon as I possibly can.

In the meantime, rug up, drink tea, dance a lot to keep warm and I’ll see you very soon!
Here’s a little something to keep my website warm until I return, from the Turner family’s gorgeous shoot recently!

Let’s say you’ve come to the Gold Coast for a family holiday. You’ve been to Seaworld and seen the dolphin show and gone to the beach every day and had ice cream in the park and enjoyed yourselves so much you never want to go home. What’s the best way to remember the super-special holiday you never want to forget?

Family portraits. BAM!

That’s what these guys did! The super-sweet McLennan family were visiting from Melbourne when I heard from them, and even though we were all super-busy we managed to squeeze in this lovely late-afternoon family shoot at Snapper Rocks.

Things I have learned from experience about photographing children #74: bribing them with lollies works a treat! (Pardon my pun…)

If you’re planning on having a portrait session (any kind of session – not just a family shoot), I can’t recommend enough having your session at a location that means something to you. The Griffiths are from Brisbane, but they have a holiday home near this beach and spend their happiest days together jumping off sand dunes, chasing after Pip the Dog, and generally being the most adorable family ever.

That makes these photos extra-special – they’re not just a record of how the boys looked as kids and how they connected as a family in January of the year 2012 (although that stuff is super-important too), they’re also little photographic time-capsule portals to some of the most wonderful days of their lives (like sands through the hourglass… Quick! Queue the music!) when the kids built forts atop the sand dunes and buried each other under sandcastles.

Having the Griffiths’ family portrait session on this beach made their photos that much more significant. And having your photographs taken somewhere that means something to you will make yours that much more significant too.

In November I had the pleasure of spending a weekend with the incredibly talented Caroline from Mihaja Photography, her amazing team, and a great bunch of girls with the same hopes and dreams as I have. It was kind of like a massive sleep over with cameras! I learned so much, I shot so much, and I ate so much on this weekend that it was hard to pack up and go home. Here are some of my favourite images from the weekend.

Koby and Kyah definitely know how to have fun. We built sandcastles (and knocked them down), fossicked for shells and rocks and had running races, and we might have taken a few photographs too  Here are my favourites from our playdate!

There is no such thing as a bad photo of Layla. That made it so much fun to take photos of her and her beautiful family when she was christened a couple of weeks ago! It was my first time photographing a baptism, and also my first time photographing a Greek Orthodox ceremony of any kind so I learned a lot, and I’m so grateful to Layla’s lovely mum Stav for letting me take a crack at it. Layla was baptised at the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Anna in Bundall on October 9th.

How adorable is this family?! I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with this awesome foursome on the beach at Currumbin where Margie and Beej (mum and dad) got married. We got to play in the water, run around and take some fun photos! If Beej looks familiar, you might have seen him rocking out on stage with his band, Preston Fight. Check them out – they’re pretty amazing! These guys are definitely a family of rockstars.