As things start to wind down (a little) for us I find myself looking back over the year. To be honest it’s all a bit of a blur. So many great things happened and we’ve achieved a lot. I’ve not taken as many photos of the family as I might have liked, but I’m thankful that on the odd occasion I had a minute to use my camera for reasons other than shooting weddings.

Part of the way through March something happened that pretty much everything else revolved around this year. Olivia was born. So we were now responsible for 3 children. But in the hours and weeks that followed I had chance to take stock, look back and see how far we had come. This image sums up a lot of things for me and I have a tear in my eye just writing this blog.

Olivia was born at around 1am on 20th March, which as it turns out, is Ben’s birthday too. He was 8 this year. The photograph below was taken at around 8 in the morning. After a busy night I wanted to see Ben on the morning of his birthday, as did Sally, but she didn’t quite make it until a bit later in the day… understandably.

I was exhausted, and Ben didn’t really notice that I had arrived, such is life in a childs world. But after opening a couple of presents we had time to chat. What made me most proud was that he wasn’t bothered in the slightest that Olivia was born on his birthday. In fact he was so excited that he would have another sister, and someone to share his birthday with.

This image shows Ben on his birthday. There are many more images of him extatically opening presents of Lego or computer games, and smiling politely at presents of clothes. He was happy, and he was tired. I caught him rubbing his eye. He’d had a busy few days, and was ready for a long day at school.

Not all good photographs are pretty, well lit or even well composed, but the best ones tell a story that will last a lifetime.

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