Yana Skakun
Yana Skakun
Liverpool
Natural light portrait sessions across Liverpool and Merseyside — Sefton Park, Crosby Beach, the Albert Dock waterfront and the Victorian parks of the city.
Liverpool is a city of exceptional photographic variety — its UNESCO World Heritage waterfront, the grand Victorian parks created by Edward Kemp in the 1860s, the coastal dunes and beach of Crosby and Formby, and the Georgian townscape of the city centre combine to give portrait photographers an unusually wide set of environment types within a compact area.
I photograph natural, relaxed portraits — genuine expressions, real connection, natural movement. Sessions work with your personality and the best available light. Most run 60–90 minutes: enough time to settle into the location and find the images that are genuinely yours.
I photograph individuals, couples, families, and professionals across Liverpool, Wirral, Sefton, and wider Merseyside.
Sefton Park is Liverpool's finest Victorian park — 235 acres designed by Edouard André and Lewis Hornblower in 1872, with a serpentine lake, mature planting of specimen trees, the restored Palm House (a Grade I listed glasshouse of 1896), and a rolling landscape that obscures the city beyond. The park's scale and mature canopy give it a genuinely park character — not manicured urban green space but something closer to an ornamental landscape.
Crosby Beach is home to Antony Gormley's 'Another Place' — 100 cast-iron figures dispersed across 3km of beach and 1km out to sea, facing west across the Irish Sea towards Ireland. The figures — each an exact cast of the artist's body — emerge and disappear with the tides, creating an ever-changing portrait environment of unusual conceptual and visual power. The beach itself: sand, dune, open western sky, Atlantic light.
The Albert Dock — the 1846 Jesse Hartley warehouse complex, now a Grade I listed building and UNESCO World Heritage waterfront — provides urban industrial-heritage portrait settings of high architectural quality. The Tate Liverpool, the Maritime Museum, and the dock water reflecting the Victorian brickwork provide a range of portrait angles with Liverpool's iconic Liver Building as a distant backdrop.
Princes Park, Sefton Park's smaller neighbour designed by Joseph Paxton in 1842 (one of his earliest commissions), provides an intimate formal park portrait setting. Wavertree Botanic Garden — one of the few surviving municipal botanic gardens in England's north-west — has Victorian palm house remains and a walled garden of quiet, enclosed character.
Formby Point (National Trust) north of Liverpool provides red squirrel woodland, coastal pine forest, and the extensive dune and beach system of the Sefton Coast — one of England's most significant coastal habitats. The dune slack and dry dune vegetation provides natural, wild portrait settings entirely unlike the urban parks. The beach at Formby faces west: exceptional sunset-direction light for late afternoon portrait sessions.
Liverpool's Georgian Quarter — the terraces of Rodney Street, Upper Parliament Street, and the streets radiating from Falkner Square — is one of England's finest surviving Georgian residential districts. The brick townhouses, iron railings, and leafy garden squares provide urban portrait settings of elegance and restraint that contrast sharply with the city's industrial waterfront.
£195
30 minutes
£345
75 minutes
£545
2 hours
Travel throughout Liverpool and Merseyside included.
For most portrait sessions, Sefton Park is the most versatile — it has varied settings (lake, woodland, Palm House, open grassland), it photographs well in all seasons, and it has enough scale to feel like a real landscape rather than an urban park. For coastal and atmospheric sessions, Crosby Beach or Formby are exceptional. I provide tailored location recommendations for every booking.
Yes — the 'Another Place' figures are in a public coastal area and can be incorporated into portrait sessions. High tide timing affects how many figures are visible and accessible; I plan Crosby sessions around the tidal schedule for the best result.
Golden hour — 60–90 minutes before sunset — gives the warmest, most directional light for outdoor portraits. In Liverpool, this arrives around 9pm in midsummer and 4pm in winter. I recommend evening sessions for most locations, with Crosby Beach being particularly spectacular at late golden hour facing west.
Yes — I cover the full Wirral Peninsula including West Kirby, Heswall, Parkgate, Port Sunlight, and Birkenhead Park (Joseph Paxton's 1847 prototype for Central Park, New York). The Dee Estuary and the Hilbre Islands view from West Kirby are excellent portrait locations.
Tell me about the session you're looking for and I'll suggest the best location and time.
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