Motherhood sessions in Cardiff: what they are, and who they're for

If you've come across the phrase "motherhood session" and weren't entirely sure what it meant, you're not on your own. It's the question I'm asked most often, usually followed by "is that just a family photoshoot with a different name?"

It isn't, and here's the difference.

What a motherhood session actually is

A family session is about the whole family. Everybody's in it, everybody gets a turn, and the photographs are of a group.

A motherhood session is about you and your children. That's it. No partner, no group shots, no arranging six people into a line and hoping the four year old holds still.

It's the relationship between you and them. Photographed properly, for once.

That usually means a lot of being close. Them on your hip. Them in your lap. Hands, arms, foreheads together, the way they climb on you without asking because you're just furniture to them. It's quieter than a family session and it's a great deal less organised.

Who books them

Every kind of mum, at every stage, but a few reasons come up more than others.

Because she isn't in any of the photographs. This is far and away the most common one. Thousands of pictures on her phone, and she's behind every single one of them.

Because something's changing. The last baby. The first one starting school. A body that's done something enormous and is still settling. A birthday that feels significant.

Because somebody told her to. Usually a friend who did one and hasn't stopped going on about it.

Because she has almost nothing with her own mum, and doesn't want her children to say the same thing in thirty years.

But I hate having my photograph taken

Then you're in good company, because so do I.

I've never enjoyed it. Not once, not in my whole life. That stiffness the second a camera comes out, the not knowing what to do with your hands, the way your face stops working properly. I know all of it intimately, and it's exactly why I work the way I do.

I photograph quietly, from the side, while you're looking at them. There's no "say cheese", no chin down, no arranging you. Most of the session you'll be busy with a small person who's climbing on you, and you'll forget I'm there. That's when the photographs happen.

You don't have to be good at it. You just have to turn up.

What actually happens

We'll agree a location, usually somewhere outdoors in or around Cardiff, or your own home if that suits better. Home is a lovely option with a baby, and it means you're never far from a feed, a nappy or a nap.

You'll get a planning guide beforehand and your own portal, so you're not trying to remember anything.

On the day, you turn up with your little ones and I get out of the way. There's no run sheet. If somebody needs feeding, we stop. If somebody has a meltdown, that's fine, and honestly some of my favourite frames have come out of exactly that.

Afterwards, your photographs arrive in a private online gallery.

What to wear

Soft, simple and comfortable. Creams, oatmeal, sage, dusty blue, denim, anything you'd actually wear.

Avoid big logos and anything brand new that you'll be fiddling with, because you'll be picking at it the whole time and it always shows. And whatever else, wear something you can sit on the floor in, because you will be on the floor.

For them, the same. Comfortable beats smart every single time.

The bit nobody asks about

You will not love every photograph of yourself. Almost nobody does, and I'd be lying if I said otherwise.

But you will see the way your child looks at you, and the way you look at them. You'll see the real smiles and the laughs between you, and the way they come in for a cuddle without thinking about it. And you'll fall in love with that, and with those pictures, then and every year afterwards when you look back at them. Because what you'll have made is a feeling and a memory, and that's the whole point.

What I notice with most mums is that they come to the gallery braced, they get past their own face somewhere around the fifth image, and then they see what it actually is. Which is their child, looking at them, the way their child looks at them.

That's the photograph. You're just in it, which is rather the point.

The details

Motherhood sessions run all year, in and around Cardiff and across South Wales.

You can see the current options, what's included and how the booking works over on the motherhood page.