I was a ‘galleon in full sail’ my husband said. I was a big as a house, suffering terribly from hot restless feet - I remember that much, but I can’t remember what it felt like to be pregnant. To feel his hiccups and kicks as he moved around inside (he had good footie potential even then), or what it felt like to carry him in one arm and feel his little chest rise and fall against mine as he slept.
I forget his baggy knees, sharp tiny fingernails and the milky grin at the end of a feed, how the skin that was too big for his bones filled out to become rolls of dimply, raspberry-blowing flesh. I forget the gummy smiles, the giggles, the heart-wrenching cries and the satisfaction of a windy post-feed burp, I forget how our faces looked as we gazed with adoration and accomplishment at this perfect little person we had made.
So I picked up my camera to start photographing other people out of regret that I had never done the same for ourselves. I have one cringingly awkward ‘art nude’ photograph of me on my due date, taken by my husband who thought I was utterly bonkers. In my head I think I was channelling the famous Demi Moore Vanity Fair magazine cover, and needless to say the image has never seen the light of day.
It is a cliché to say that portrait photographers create memories, but in truth that is exactly what we do. Nearly 16 years later I have an aching regret that my memories of what my now galumphing pre-teens were like as tiny ones have got mixed up, diluted and hazy in the spin cycle of those sleep-deprived, hormone-fuelled, emotional rollercoaster years of a young growing family.
Oh how I wish I could remember.
Then, a few years later, after we’d done it all over again, I started to feel myself again. I was getting my mojo back, regaining a sense of who I was, not just as a mother but as a woman. Celebrating a woman’s innate natural beauty became a new focus for my photography as I discovered a demand from other women also needing to feel desirable, beautiful and confident.
Boudoir photography has become an answer to that and I gain huge pleasure in creating beautiful intimate imagery of women that enable them feel themselves again.
I am incredibly lucky to have a job that I passionately enjoy. I get to meet some wonderful people with whom I am proud to say I have forged lasting bonds and who entrust me with creating irreplaceable memories of the most important people in their lives. That is a responsibility I undertake with great care and passion and I would love to do the same for you.