A day in the life | Stockholm Child and Family Photographer

Hey you :). Wanna see how I spent my day yesterday? I thought maybe I should share some behind the scenes from Jolly HQ. So, don’t just sit there thinking about it, grab a Budvar and start reading. It’s short and sweet :)

Early start and I roll out of bed looking like an extra from The Walking Dead. It’s time to hit the yoga mat and get to work. Where there’s a camera there’s my photo-bombing dog ;)

I don’t leave home without meditating. My presence muscle has definitely gotten stronger, but there is always room for improvement.

Time to walk the dog and sit at my favourite spot in Sweden. They can scatter my ashes here when I’m gone… if it’s not too illegal.

Can’t go to the office without a big mug of Irish tea and some homemade chocolate chip cookies. C’mon, I’m only human.

It’s client photo book design time. This is when I wish I had a private masseuse to give my back and neck a good seeing to.

Have to retrive some stolen socks from my dog. This time he let me have them. Sometimes he swallows one, then waits until we’re home alone together and vomits it up for me. Good times.

Checking client prints. Imagine, these prints are going to be in a family for generations. Print your photos, people.

Now, I had hoped to wrap up this blog post with a shot of a perfectly executed dinner (OK, I was never going to produce a perfectly executed dinner), but I ran out of time to cook any kind of dinner before I headed into Stockholm for the night with a friend. Didn’t crawl into bed until 2am this morning. What can I say, I don’t get out too often ;)

I should also mention that I have a personal goal every day to make at least one person smile. I am thrilled to tell you that yesterday, I made - wait for it - 12 PEOPLE SMILE. No word of a lie. 12 PEOPLE. Should I not get some kind of a Nobel prize for that? And on top of that, I made two brand new friends. Not bad for a Thursday, right?

Peace and love :)

Extended family photo session | Stockholm Outdoor family photography

Guess who’s back, back again. Sandy’s back, tell a friend. Guess who’s back. Guess who’s back. Guess who’s back. Guess who’s back. Guess who’s back.

You get the picture, right? :)

The summer holidays are drawing to a close, so I thought I’d pop in here and share this fun extended family photo session from last month. When the mom, who has booked several Jolly sessions the past few years, got in touch and told me she wanted to book a surprise photo session for the grandad who was having a big birthday, I jumped at the chance. I LOVE being involved in a sneaky surprise ;). So, I did all my usual pre-shoot prep work, then make sure all my lenses were squeaky clean and all batteries were charged. Off to bed I went the night before feeling pumped to be involved in a surprise shoot...

Stumbling out of bed the next morning (I never arise gracefully after slumber), I made my way to the bathroom, looked in the mirror and screamed loud enough to be heard in the Outer Hebrides. I probably woke the dead. The left side of my face looked like I’d taken a round-house kick from Conor McGregor. My eye was almost swollen closed and my cheekbone was buried miles beneath puffy, tender skin. I probably made Quasimodo look like a complete babe. Somehow, I had developed a nasty eye infection (damn you a million times over eye infections). Crying/going back to bed wasn’t an option, however, as I had a client waiting and ain’t no way I was going to let her down. I donned the biggest pair of sunglasses I had and made my way south of Stockholm.

For fear of making the family run screaming for their lives, I left the sunglasses on for the entire shoot, not my usual modus operandi, I can assure you. I even managed to leave all my self pity at home and had a cracking time with this fun and fabulous family. Just look at these photographs (priceless family heirlooms) - you’d never think the photographer was functioning with only one good eye and a massive pair of sunnies, right?

If you are planning a cunning surprise for a loved one, don’t, for the love of God, forget to book a photographer. If you’re looking for a fun one, then I’m your woman ;)

Now, be a darlin’, and let me know (down below in the comments) what you think of this session.

Peace and love :)

P.S Can you believe one of the girls found a little bird on a twig. She carried him around for ages and he just sat there on the twig, loving the limelight.

Summertime and the living is easy | Familjefotograf Stockholm

Hey you :) Are you having a lovely summer so far? Are you having fun and also enjoying time by yourself? I think both are equally important. Have you stepped away from your phone for a while and just enjoyed the sound of silence?

As usual, I have been working on and off during the summer break. Well, if you can call making people laugh and taking their portrait work :). In between the planning, shooting, culling and editing, I have also enjoyed some beautiful moments with family and friends. I’ve been loving spending more time in my spiritual home, the woods, and listening to inspiring podcasts. On one of my recent woodland walks, I encountered a snake and made the mistake of telling my mother about it. “What if it wrapped itself around you and squeezed the life out of you?”, she asked in horror. “There are no anacondas in Sweden, mom”, I replied. I’m not sure she was totally convined…

Tonight I plan on watching the sunset from the balcony with some friends, and enjoying a glass or three of something cold. I thought I’d leave you with some phone snaps from the last few weeks. I’d love to hear how your summer is going. Don’t be a stranger.

Peace and love :)

When your dog loves the feel of the wind in his hair!

Sometimes you find a beautiful bench and a rusty basket at a flea market hundreds of miles away, and somehow manage to squeeze them into the boot along with two suitcases, numerous bags, etc. It was so worth the crammed journey ;)

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the saddle, but I recently enjoyed riding through a magical forest. I only walked like John Wayne for a day afterwards. By day two, feeling had returned to my thighs.

It’s always worthwhile to explore. You never know when you might find yourself a quiet beer garden and enjoy two of the most relaxing hours of your life, literally just watching the clouds go past.

This is what happens when my husband takes the kids to work for the day. I finished an entire client gallery AND I made my very first Irish soda bread. It was a roaring success with the Jolly gang :)

My dog has figured out that when I make tea, we go and sit together and have treats. Well, he gets the dog treats and I get the chocolate chip cookies.

Once you have a dog, you’ll never have a Netflix evening alone again ;)

A trip to magical Dalarna | Familjefotograf Stockholm

Warning: please look away now if you don’t like red wooden houses and log cabins ;)

When I was a kid I loved the show Grizzly Adams - a series about a frontier woodsman who lived in a log cabin with a rescued grizzly bear. There was something about the simplicty of cabin life that really appealed to me. To this day, I still love log cabins.

Well then, you can imagine my absolute delight when the Jolly gang recently spent a week in beautiful Dalarna and I saw log cabins everywhere. I probably sounded like I was having a very long asthma attack as we drove around and I kept gasping at all the log cabins, red houses, beautiful wood-work, old wooden fences and stone walls. I have never in my life seen so much charm and well preserved beauty in one place. To leave noisy surbiba behind and retreat to a quiet little village called Tällberg was a real treat for my soul. I don’t think I’ve ever been so relaxed in my life :).

If you’re thinking about making a trip to Dalarna, don’t hesitate. I wish I’d gone years ago. I had been warned that the mosquito population is strong and brutal up there, but I’m delighted (and surprised) to say I wasn’t bitten once. A day after arriving back in Stockholm however, my legs were set upon by three particularly viscious mosquitos - I even tried fighting them off with a badminton racket, but they were fearless little buggers.

Hope you get a sense of Dalarna through these photographs.

Peace and love :)