I take a photo of Mabel at least once a day, sometimes multiple times a day. Videos too, I don’t want to miss a single moment. Due to the nature of my job James and I have been lucky enough to have a couple of family shoots as well, I treasure those images more than anything in the world.

Our very own Becky is going to share her thoughts on capturing yourselves as well as your littles on film. Please do share your thoughts and experiences in the comments box below.

To have a family is a beautiful thing and we try to capture all of those milestone moments in our little one’s lives. Since the moment Leo was born, there has been a camera shoved in his face. I’m talking a video at like 9 seconds old in your face!

For his first year I took a photo of him every day. I took a photo of him in the same spot every month so we could see how he’d grown and changed. I took copious amounts of him sleeping on his daddy’s chest because let’s be honest, that’s possibly the most beautiful sight in the whole world. He is all consuming, he is everything, the most important thing.

To sum up, there are thousands of photos of Leo. He is our world. But in all of these photos, his world is missing. Because his world is us. This fact didn’t dawn on me until he was 16 months old. His world consists of me, his Daddy and his favourite being on the whole planet; Sasha the dog. I looked through the thousands of photos and guess how many there were of the three of us? Three. Yep. Three. And not a single one of the four of us.

There was only one thing for it; to get our mugs captured by someone super special and grab some memories of us as a family unit before I blink and he’s turned 16 and wants to lock himself in his room.

Uk turned Montreal Photographer Steve Gerrard shot our wedding back in 2011. I’d never liked myself in photos until that day and so he was my first choice to capture our next phase of life. I think it’s important when doing a shoot like this to do something that captures you as a family, doing something you love, whether thats chilling on your sofa or eating around your dinner table or playing bowling and enjoying the arcade. For us, it had to be outdoors where we spend a lot of time with our furry friend. In this scenario you can really relax. You can really be you. Forget the camera is there and play and run and laugh.

I am overwhelmed by the results and I am SO glad we did it and although at times I wished we’d done it earlier, Leo is now at a stage where his personality can shine through. The pictures hold a million memories. He was really not well on the day and he wanted attention from me a lot but that is life. Even though he just wanted to cuddle me for 80% of the time he still smiled. He still gave that beautiful grin that melts my heart on a daily basis. I am so grateful that I have these to look back on when being a Mommy gets hard and to remind me how much he loves us and how happy we make him.

So as I said at the start, family is a beautiful thing but don’t forget that you are an integral part of that family too so get your face on camera. To your little one you are all consuming, you are everything, the most important thing.

Don’t forget that.