I know I sure do!
And so of course, naturally we want endless photos of them - capturing every milestone, remembering every age.
Tyne is yet to turn 10 months old, and already every wall in my living room (and most other rooms...) is adorned with photos of him!
At this rate, I'm going to need a much bigger house to keep accommodating all of these pictures!
Professional photographs are something I have always been a fan of, and I wanted to make sure that I had some great quality professional shots of Tyne since until recently most of my own photos were simple Iphone snaps!
Since he was born, we've used 3 professional photography services...
The first professional photo of Tyne was taken in the hospital by the Bounty photographer, as I imagine is the case for most babies.
I had heard a lot of talk about how Bounty Portraits were a rip off, and that I should avoid them...
When the photographer came to our ward when Tyne was a day old, she was lovely and I was excited to let her take photos of him in various poses...of course she tried to sell me a package but I said I'd like to think about it, so she gave me an online access code and I looked back over them a few weeks after the birth.
The package details were priced around £45 - the package I chose included an acrylic block framed photo, 2 unframed small photos and a keyring photo - I thought this was actually quite reasonable and I was keen to own the first professional pictures taken of him.
The photos now have pride of place on my living room mantle and one hung in a frame in my bedroom....I love seeing how tiny he looks in them, and I'm SO glad I decided to go ahead and order them!Well worth the money in my opinion!
The next professional photos were taken at Tyne's Christening when he was 4 weeks old - they were taken by my cousin who is a professional wedding photographer.
He got a lot of candid shots during the Christening and party, and I love the shots of Tyne with his godparents in particular.
He edited the photos for us, using some really lovely effects and I'm thrilled with the results - especially since an event such as a christening can often be hectic and even with the best intentions it can be very hard to take as many photos as you'd like - particularly family shots as you're relying on other people using your camera correctly and taking the shot!
The photos have left us with priceless beautiful memories of a special day, and I'm very grateful to my cousin for being kind enough to take the photos for us.
As these were taken by a family member, they were free of charge.
The next photo session we had was when Tyne was around 6 weeks old, we felt like he was changing all the time and we wanted to capture how he looked at this age.
We went to Pixifoto at Mothercare - well you may remember my blog post rant about it all, but in short - the experience was far from satisfactory!
I felt that their prices were absolutely extortionate and the quality of the photos was pretty awful....1 or 2 came out nice, but really no better than I could have taken myself and the ones I specifically requested with angel wings are a massive fail - you can't even tell that he's wearing wings, it looks like someone laid a feather on his back!!!
The package cost us over £200 - Such a waste of money, and I would warn everybody against using them.
The final photo session we have had was just before Christmas when Tyne was just over 8 months old - we wanted to have a "First Christmas" shoot to look back on, and I thought it would be great to have the photos to use for gifts for my family too.
The shoot was done by a local photographer who I found on Facebook ( Capture photography in Devon) - the session was a mini-shoot lasting 20 minutes and after the shoot we were given a disc containing 10 of the best images (the agreement was 10 but we actually got 14 on the disc!).
The photographer was friendly and accommodating, and I was thrilled with how the pictures came out.
Rather than having to decide on prints and order the ones we wanted, we have the freedom of having that disc - we can go back to it whenever we want and have prints made at our convenience.
The cost of the shoot including the disc was just £25 which I think is incredible value for money - I wish I had known about these services before I was so badly ripped off by the previous company, and would highly recommend checking our Facebook and Google for your local photography companies!
After our Christmas shoot, we ordered some of the prints to be put onto canvas - we ordered some as gifts for my parents and sister, and of course we wanted one for ourselves!
Prices for Canvas prints are so reasonable now, we use companies such as Custom Canvas who make is so easy to upload your desired photos and create the canvas you want, with prices starting at £7.54 you really can't go wrong!The canvas is then delivered straight to your door - giving you high quality prints that you'll enjoy for years with minimal fuss and for a VERY reasonable cost!
Here is a little peek at some of the prints we've had made which now adorn our walls:
Do you have a lot of photographs in your home? How have your experiences with photography sessions been?As always, I'd love to hear from you!
