Following on from the previous post, here are some more favourites from my sessions photographing the young pre-school children who attend St Mary’s Playgroup in Woodbridge.

This was the first time they had had pictures taken of the children just being themselves and caught naturally as they went about their morning’s play, rather than posed in a set up studio space within the playgroup.

With thanks to all the staff for their help and co-operation, the parents of these lovely children who allowed me to photograph them, and for the many lovely comments I have received:

This is something I’ve long wanted to do: photograph children at play and just doing what they do at playgroup, nursery and pre- school environments. It felt right to be putting a bit of bomb under what had been before - the  typical school photograph of child posing in the headlights of a setup studio background complete with cheesy grin.

How mad it is that these school photographs don’t seem to have really moved on.  Why on earth did anyone even begin to think that separating them off from their natural environment and putting them in front of a fake blue mottled background was a good thing?

Anyway, I finally got around to it in June/July this year when I had the privilege and the opportunity of  spending a couple of hours on 4 mornings with the children who attend  St Mary’s Playgroup in Woodbridge, Suffolk.

I had a lovely time and it was especially enjoyable observing and interacting with the children as my own daughter also attends. There were so many gorgeous children full of character that I photographed, and this was effectively 3 shoots in terms of shooting time, so I’m going to blog my favourites in 2 parts. Here are a few that I loved  from the first couple of sessions: