Since 1997 we have been photographing families who return again and again. Our Then and Now photo-shoots are good fun to recreate and reminisce. I think you'll agree this is something to share, have you recreated your Then?

 

Since we opened our studio in 1997, Janet and Michael have had their family of 4 beautiful girls photographed with us.

Janet's intentions were to have a shoot every one to two years around Christmas time, and for when the girls' reached their 18th birthdays, to display the photographs in her very own 'rogues' gallery'.

The photographs below tell the story of how the studio shoots began with black and white film, of just 36 exposures to choose from, seen on a contact sheet once the film had been processed in the dark room, usually available a week later!

Each shoot took about an hour, with similar poses each time.

The first family shoot in 1998 was with their 3 little girls, and new 6 week old daughter, who cried throughout the shoot, but as Janet said, "I want to portray my family as we are at each moment in time", and so we did.

How times have changed, I encouraged  Janet and Michael to go with the new digital option in 2002, we reverted back to black and white film the following shoot as we thought digital was a passing phase - how wrong were we - only to continue with digital in 2007.

Janet kept to her word, with all four girls now over the age of 18, the photo-shoots have become a family tradition with the girls requesting we continue their annual shoot.

Looking back this story just goes to show how important family photographs are, not only for the fun filled experience, but the pleasure the printed photographs continue to bring, now, and for future generations to enjoy as well.

As my team and I celebrate our 20th year at SMS Creative Photography in 2017, we thank all our customers for trusting us and including us in preserving their personal history, and to experience the evolution of photography itself jointly.

Since writing this we are now here at Stella.

Stella