I first met Michelle and Chris when I took some photos for them when Reuben was younger, and I was so taken by how fun and loving a family they are. So when they asked me to come back to take some more photos once younger sister Rose was on the scene, (“To capture some of those memories and because our first photo shoot with you was a great experience and we loved the pics! Also, because there’s two kids and FAIRNESS. We would never hear the end of it if Rose wasn’t featured”) I jumped at the chance.

Chris and Michelle have been together since high school and family is the most important thing to them. They are so loving, laid back and wonderfully silly – my cheeks ached from smiling by the end of this shoot. The kids are so much fun – warm, empathetic and full of character, and I tried my best to capture Rose’s loving, loud cheeky personality and Reuben’s outgoing nature, his intense emotions, his love of food, and both of their love of dancing, riding bikes and being ninjas.

I especially loved that their grandmother Kim, aka ‘Ah Mah’ (meaning grandma in the Chinese dialect Hokkien, her mother tongue) was part of this shoot. She was reticent about a photo shoot but apparently once she saw the photos from our previous shoot she was sold. Michelle explained, “She loves her grandkids so much and they are very close to her. She’s very silly and with them and they’re always laughing together,” so it was really important to me to capture this bond between them too.

I absolutely loved that sushi making and traditional Chinese clothes were part of the shoot, and as Michelle said the family loved drawing and getting creative, the use of window crayons and some wonderful Winter light was too tempting an opportunity to pass up!

All in all, the brief was to capture the “inevitable chaos” and to get “a photo with all of in because that pretty much never happens!” I think Michelle put it so beautifully when she said what she wanted to remember from these photos, “Although parenting is a bloody hard slog, there are magic moments every day. We count our blessings every single day.”

Here are a few of my favourites….