Children are masters of mindfulness. Let’s freeze moments with documentary portrait family photography and join them, even for just a few seconds...

A failry short and sweet blog entry from me this week. All I wanted to share with you was these photographs I took during portrait photography sessions in St Albans. An image that reminds us that when we were kids, we aced the art of mindfulness. We could gaze at soap foam forever. We could spend hours in our baths playing with their rubber ducks. We could even watch drops of water fall from the bath tap and make ripples into our lukewarm bathwater.

We indeed aced mindfulness back then. Now, when was the last time you sat at your kitchen table and stared at the wall? Without feeling guilty, I hasten to add!

When was the light time that you just stood there with your back facing the hot summer sun and closed your eyes whilst you are enjoying its warmth?

I can hear your “Yes but…”. Yes but we had the time. Yes but we could just sit there unaware because we didn’t have the washing to put away or the evening dinner to cook. I hear you. I hear you loud and clear. And you have a point. When my stepkids were still at home, when I had a full-time 60 hour a week job in education, I found mindfulness or indeed anyone asking me to, well, slow down, deeply irritating. When you are in the thick of it, slowing down is the hardest thing to do. Because the to-do list seems to keep growing and watching water droplets fall into lukewarm bathwater probably won’t help reduce the forever ending list of things you feel you need to get done.

But what if idleness made us more productive. What if learning to ignore the noise, ignore the forever to-do list, ignore the endless demands we put on ourselves actually made us more productive?

Here is a wonderful little video which you may find really helpful that basically tells us it’s important to, at times, be totally lazy.

Next time, when you have just put the kids in bed, and finished essentially a 12 hour shift, and you fancy sitting down on the sofa and blankly stare at the wall and guilt starts to trickle in… think back at this: doing nothing right now makes you better at whatever you are doing next.

You may wonder how on earth this is related to documentary portrait family photography. Well, that’s the whole point. My passion for celebrating not just our ying-yang but also THE present moment stems exactly from all those years of over-working, over-stressing, over-doing absolutely everything. Despite me getting up at 6 and going to bed at 12 and working for the majority of that time, I actually didn’t become better at my job, or actually, far more importantly, I didn’t enjoy life at all. Shooting now makes me break everything down into moments that are worth hanging on to. Being a family portrait photographer is my way of embracing mindfulness… but professionally. How lucky am I, right?! And in capturing and freezing your moments, I hope to be able to help you join your children in being masters of mindfulness too.