Spring Family Session in Cambridge: The Johnsons

Spring Family Session in Cambridge: The Johnsons

The Johnsons contacted me in late February. Their youngest, Evie, had just turned one. Their eldest, Noah, was four and currently obsessed with trains and dinosaurs and trains again. They wanted photographs before Evie changed any more — and before Noah changed any more, because everyone who has photographed a four-year-old knows that four is a distinct and very specific human being who will not exist at five.

We booked a Sunday morning in mid-May, the lightest part of spring before the vegetation gets too thick. The location was Jesus Green — easy to access, the chestnut trees in full leaf, the river visible from the open meadow area.

The Session

Family sessions with a one-year-old and a four-year-old are not controlled events. Anyone who tells you they are is either fibbing or has never met either. The approach is to stay close, move when the children move, and watch. Children are often the best photographers in the room in the sense that they find exactly the right places inadvertently: Evie found a patch of dandelions and sat in the middle of them looking at a seed head with total concentration. Noah took his parents to an enormous horse chestnut tree he had spotted and demanded they all stand under it.

These are the photographs. Not the posed group in a row, but Noah's hand in his father's as they walked toward the river, Evie laughing when the wind moved the grass around her.

The Light in May

May morning light in Cambridge is quite special — still relatively low in the sky at 9am, warm in colour, coming through the fresh leaves with a quality that is impossible later in summer when the canopy is heavier. We met at 9am. By 10:15 the session was complete. An hour and fifteen minutes, 280 photographs taken, 62 delivered images.