Birthday, anniversary and family event photography

It follows how long you need covered, whether it is at home or a venue, and how many people are there. Most parties are booked in blocks of two, three or four hours. A cake smash session is priced differently because it is a studio-style session rather than event coverage. Send us the date and details for a figure.

Two to three hours for most children's parties, front-loaded on the early part, because small children have roughly ninety good minutes before tiredness sets in. Three to four hours for adult celebrations, covering arrival through the speeches. Booking only the cake-cutting hour is the most common mistake.

A cake smash is a session where a one-year-old is given a cake and allowed to destroy it, photographed in controlled light against a clean background. It runs about ninety minutes: warm-up frames, roughly fifteen minutes of actual cake, then a bath or clean-up set which is often the best part.

If you want portrait-quality images of your child at one year, yes. It produces something a party cannot: clean light, no distractions, and the child as the whole subject. If what you actually want is a record of the birthday party and the people at it, book party coverage instead, or both.

Better not. With a room of adults watching and encouraging, most one-year-olds freeze or get upset. With just a parent and the photographer, most get curious within a few minutes and then genuinely enjoy themselves. The audience is the single biggest reason cake smashes go wrong.

Soft sponge with light buttercream. Fondant does not smash, it sits there in one piece and defeats the purpose. Avoid dark colours, which stain skin and clothing and are difficult to correct in editing. Simple and pale photographs better and cleans up faster.

Two outfits, one clean for the warm-up frames and one for the cake, plus a towel, wipes and a change for afterwards. If you want a bath set at the end, bring the child's own bath things because familiar objects help. And do not schedule anything tightly after it.

Two to four hundred edited images depending on length and guest count. For children's parties we also deliver a separate smaller set of just the birthday child, which is the set that ends up printed and sent to relatives. Pulling those out of a large gallery is work most families never do.

Ten to fourteen days for the full edited set, with a preview set within two or three days. The preview matters more for a party than for most work, because people want to share images while the party is still being talked about rather than a fortnight later.

Four things, none of which cost anything. Put the cake table against a plain wall rather than a window or under colour-changing lights. Know whether it is a daylight or after-dark party. Decide if guests will spread across several rooms. And tell the family a time for the group photographs.

Yes, and it has to happen in the ten minutes before guests arrive, because that is the only point at which the setup looks the way it was planned. If you want the decor recorded, ask us to arrive early rather than assuming there will be a gap later. There never is.

Yes, and these are shot much closer to event coverage than portrait work. The room is the subject and a complete record is the deliverable. The one thing worth planning is a structured family group list early in the evening, because relatives who travelled may not be in one room together again.

Yes. Anniversaries tend to produce their best images away from the formal programme, in the quieter moments between the scheduled parts. Speeches and toasts deserve particular attention because they are usually the emotional centre of the evening and are frequently shot badly from the back of a dark room.

Two to four weeks for most parties, and longer for December and around major festivals when everyone is celebrating something. A cake smash session can usually be arranged at shorter notice because it does not depend on a venue being available, only on a studio slot or your home.

Yes, as a short named list done early in the evening while everyone is present and before anyone starts leaving. Tell the family a time. Announcing it once takes five minutes; chasing relatives around a party takes three times as long and half of them have gone outside.

That is the normal outcome rather than a problem, and the coverage is built around it. Small children do not perform on request. We get the essential frames early while the child is fresh, then observe rather than direct. The unplanned middle of a party is where the good images come from anyway.

Both, and home parties often produce better images. Rooms are smaller and light is harder, so it needs a photographer comfortable working close in tight spaces, but the results are more personal than a banquet hall. Tell us the layout in advance so we know what to bring.

Yes, and if guests genuinely spread across both simultaneously it is worth discussing a second photographer. One person moving between a garden and two indoor rooms will always be in the wrong place for something. It depends on guest numbers and how the space is used.

Where you want it, with a separate person rather than the photographer doing both. For a first birthday a short film of the speeches, the cake and the child is genuinely worth having, because a one-year-old changes so quickly that moving footage captures something stills cannot.

The realistic schedule rather than the invitation times, the address, whether guests will use one space or several, and a short list of five to ten people who must be photographed. For a child's party, tell us the nap schedule, because a party running through a nap goes badly regardless.