London Family Photographer
Are you looking for a London Family Photographer?
Natural family photography that captures the natural beauty of your family interacting and making memories.
Hi! I’m Tom Aizenberg, and I primarily like to capture life as it is, with a focus on finding the beauty in reality – and there’s nothing more beautiful than family life.
Memories matter. I firmly believe that I’m in the nostalgia business – it’s my job to capture the moments that become lifetime memories, and I always have one eye on the future when I’m working.
It’s a cliché to say it, but kids do grow up so fast, and it can be so crucial to capture these moments before they pass us by. The great thing about professional photography is that you get beautiful, great-looking pictures with all of you in them.
Each session that I shoot is approached with the aim of getting a balance of nice, slightly more posed pictures, with you looking at the camera – but crucially I like to ensure there are also pictures that are unscripted and completely natural. Pictures, where you are interacting together as a family with minimal input from me, to allow your true personalities to shine through – including all the rough edges that can sometimes add to the reality.
I aim to avoid polished, sanitised and fake versions of family life in favour of beautiful, artistic, natural and evocative images that capture the moments that you will look back on for years to come and say ‘that is so us’.
Want to see more?
I offer a range of shoots, and this means we can tailor your pictures to your family dynamic, and make sure we capture your memories in the best way possible.
Children are an amazing force of nature, and that means that they might not be in the mood for a super forced, posed shoot. Keeping things natural, with some more relaxed posed shots to break things up, is the best way to get pictures of children in a way that accommodates their needs.
Check out the gallery above to see some of my favourite images from past family shoots.
How much?
Every family has a budget, so I understand you need to plan for the costs. That’s why I offer a range of packages to suit your individual needs. See below to find out my range of options.
London Family Photography Pricing
3 Ways to Work With Me:
Mini Sessions
Cost £200 (per 60 minute slot)
This is the most affordable way to work with me and is also a great way to test the waters of family shoots, to see how they work if you’re not ready for a full shoot yet.
The way this works is based on each family booking a 60-minute slot on a set date, meeting in a local park or somewhere picturesque. We take a variety of pictures during that time, and you will then receive 15 images as part of the session fee. You will be able to purchase an extended gallery of up to 50 images, but there is no obligation.
In order to make mini shoots viable, I need to ensure a minimum number of bookings, so this may affect the number of dates available.
The fee for this is £200 per slot, and this includes:
- A 60-minute family shoot, featuring a mix of posed and more natural images
- Image post-processing and editing
- A pre-shoot PDF guide on how to prepare and what to wear
- 10 images from the mini session to download (these are high res, so you will have the option to print them yourselves) included in a personalised and private online gallery – a great to share with family and friends
- Optional extended gallery purchase
- Option to order prints, albums, wall art etc direct from your gallery
Moment in Time Family Sessions
Cost £450 (3-4 hours)
I call these sessions ‘Moment in Time’ because my aim is to capture your family being themselves and make some memories. It’s all about making images bursting with feeling, energy and personality. Whether it’s muddy puddles, monopoly or Mario Kart – this shoot is all about making images of your family being your authentic selves!
Children grow so quickly, they keep you busy, and between balancing the demands of your careers and your family life, before you realise it, years have gone by in a blur.
A family shoot is a great way to make sure you freeze these moments as best you can, to give you that opportunity to savour the moment and have these visual mementoes to remember these crucial moments – whether it’s the belly laughs, the big hugs, the cheeky smiles, or even the tears – it’s all part of your family’s story.
It’s also so easy for parents not to be in family photos, as one or other of the parents is often taking the pictures. After this session, you will have a whole gallery full of both of you, and your kids – all those amazing moments where you are interacting together captured forever.
The shoot will last around 4 hours (depending on nap schedules etc.) and are a great way to work around the little ones’ naps and any moods. I find spending more time with you as a family gives me that chance to build trust with you and most importantly your kids, allowing me to get the best possible moments.
These sessions often start at your home, and we will usually also have a more posed shoot within them, as well as natural moments between you. There’s no age range for the children – they can be as old or as young as you like! We can do anything you like with this time, whether that’s heading to a local park or other natural area, or playing board games or Nintendo Switch. Whatever is true to you, I want to capture it!
Note: for young babies, I often suggest we do the shoot in your home, so that you have access to anything you may need, and we can keep your baby comfortable.
These sessions cost £400 and include:
- A pre-shoot phone consultation to discuss logistics and things like clothing and locations
- 4-hour family shoot starting (and possibly ending) at your home, including a visit to a local park/natural area
- All image processing and editing
- 40 high res images included in a personalised and private online gallery – a great to share with family and friends
- An option to purchase the full gallery of 100+ images for an extra charge
- Any additional family members such as grandparents, aunts, uncles etc are welcome to be included, but bear in mind this may impact the final gallery – in terms of ratio of staged to natural images
- Option to order prints, albums, wall art etc direct from your gallery
- Travel further afield than 30 miles of Kingston upon Thames may incur an additional fee of £50.
- Weekday discounts are available – great for the school holidays!
Day in The Life Family Sessions
Cost £700
This option includes everything in the ‘Moment in Time session’ and more. It is the best option for guaranteeing the best possible end result – it gives time to build that necessary rapport, to give us the chance for multiple different locations. When it comes to small children, we all know that they experience the full spectrum of emotion throughout the day, so if I am around you for 7 hours or so, it gives us the best possible chance of capturing the moments when they are smiling and happy. That said, I think there is a certain beauty in the moments when kids aren’t necessarily smiling and happy – capturing those sensitively is always a goal of mine. Tears and hugs are often a big part of family life, and I strongly believe that we should embrace life for what it is – not try to sanitise it.
7 hours can seem like a lot, but it’s more than just about surfing the waves of emotions and antics, it can also be about going out somewhere a bit further afield to capture. Maybe you have great family memories at Margate or Brighton beach, or the New Forest is magical for your kids – this is a great way to incorporate these places into your shoot.
Sometimes the best moments take a while to surface, and I find that it’s only in the last hours of a full day session that the kids fully relax, and we start to see their true personalities pushing through – which is where the gold is.
Children are a force of nature, and trying to force them into specific poses can be the quickest way to wind them up. My aim is to stay in the room, but with a low-profile presence, and allow the moments of connection between you and them to happen naturally and unprompted. That way the picture of you hugging is a real moment, and something they chose to do, not something they had to be told to do.
These sessions cost £700 and include:
- A pre-shoot phone consultation to discuss logistics and things like clothing and locations
- 7-hour family shoot starting (and possibly ending) at your home, including a visit to a local park/natural area
- All image processing and editing
- A full gallery of 200+ high res images included in a personalised and private online gallery – a great to share with family and friends
- A slideshow of the shoot, set to music
- Any additional family members such as grandparents, aunts, uncles etc are welcome to be included, but bear in mind this may impact the final gallery – in terms of ratio of staged to natural images
- Option to order prints, albums, wall art etc direct from your gallery
- Travel further afield than 30 miles of Kingston upon Thames may incur an additional fee of £50-£100. This can be a great way to get shots on a beach or other natural location that might be a bit further away.
- Weekday discounts are available – great for the school holidays!
Ready To Get in Touch?
What Is London Family Photography?
I guess this is the mullion pound question! I would say that photography is all about capturing moments like lightning in a bottle so that they can be a source of memories for years to come. It’s been shown by neuroscientists that printed photos around the home are good for our mental health, and a lot of what I do is intended to end up as a printed photo on a wall.
Family photography is all about making beautiful images of you as a family – together and happy. Pictures that form the basis of memories for years to come, pictures that capture you in all your glory, pictures that make you feel something. The photos only become more special as time goes by.
One of the hardest parts about having children is that, because it’s so amazing but busy, time can pass in a heartbeat. It’s also often the case that one of the parents is often taking the pictures, and because you don’t have the time to focus only on the photography, the pictures come out less than perfect. I want to capture those all-important memories and make sure you freeze those moments for the rest of your lives.
Being a family photographer means understanding how children work, whether it’s simple things like understanding that their emotions aren’t simple and that you sometimes have to work around them, instead of forcing them into a position. As I have a young daughter myself, I pride myself on a patient and low-key approach. I let the kids get used to me, and then I work with you to try and find the right moment to see if we can coax the kids into a more posed picture of you all smiling and looking great.
But that said, the best thing about a more documentary approach is that the focus is on you having fun together – after all, who is better at getting a smile out of a child than their parents? With that in mind, I’m constantly watching and catching those moments where you have that emotional connection, and because it’s real, it feels all the more meaningful and precious. Smiling at the camera is all well and good, but belly-laughing because you are having such a good time together is an instant memory, and I find those pictures mean the most to my clients.
I work primarily in London and Surrey and the southeast. If you’d like to chat more about your family photography, click below to contact me.