13 years ago, I photographed Katie & Patrick’s engagement photos. I had a look back over that session before heading out to meet them again, and I was absolutely honoured that they considered me when they were booking their updated photos. My posing style and editing style have both changed quite a lot since 2012! And I didn’t realize how much so as I make small adaptations year by year.

As regular visitors to Victoria, they had a few spots that were special to them, and it was a tough decision on where to do the photo session, but we settled on Clover Point, somewhere they spend a lot of their time. One of their past pups had some special places there, and we also wanted to honour her by including some of those places in photos.

I was nervous for how busy it would be, but I did some editing out of the people as distractions in the background. I kept some in some shots because that’s the reality of their trips to this park, and I wanted to share with them both the magic of their family of four, and the snapshots of the reality of their time at the park.

I had some poses in mind, but photographing families with dogs, you need to be about as flexible as photographing families with toddlers. Of the pose ideas that I had written down, what worked best to motivate my shooting was as simple as:

• Get down to the dog’s perspective
• Snuggle, snuggle, snuggle… and a little kiss!
• Capture them playing

Of course the beauty of the location and length of the session made for lots of different background options – my weakness.