Family photos

[flowerpowerlondon]

Just wondering how soon after adopted children are with you would you get family photo's done? I mean professional ones at your house/ in your garden/ local park that sort of thing? Also has anyone used an excellent London based photographer who is good and experienced with recently adopted children/ new families they could recommend for this? Thanks

Personally I would wait until after the celebration hearing. Technically we are all glorified foster carers until the adoption order goes through.

As an unglorified foster carer, I take a family photo as soon as a child feels comfortable with being part of the family, and display it up on our fireplace. It is a statement that they are part of our family. As foster carers, some children take a while to accept being part of our family, as they feel they are being disloyal to their own family. I think you have to consider when your little one is ready. But I would certainly do it earlier than later. Being part of a family is important, whether in foster or adoptive families.

I've never done professional shoots, they just aren't my style, but we have loads of family snapshots about with our foster child.

Our AD was 12 months on placement and quite soon after we put up photographs of her and us together. We felt this was very important as our AD was preverbal; so felt it would be a visual reminder and be another way to reinforce our roles and that we were her forever family. She enjoyed looking at these and still does and now her language is more advanced we can discuss aspects of these photographs.

We framed a photo of the 3 of us & it is in DSs bedroom. He often talks about the photo & his mummy & daddy in it.

We have photos of just him & me, him & DH & him playing on his own scattered around our home. We feel it makes him feel at home, all of the family also have photos of him, say his school photo with the other grandchildren too, again it just helped him to feel love & very much an important family member integrated into our entire family

We went to a photographers studio on the court hearing day both times. Seeing the photos displayed on the wall is a nice reminder of a lovely day.
Although with dd1 and dd2 who came home in the summer we went to a studio in October to have their photos taken for Christmas presents for family, looking at the photos now, dd1 is very tense, so they are not the best photos we have.

Wow thanks really helpful. All feedback is really appreciated :-)

Ds loved seeing photos of himself up on the walls at home and we talked about the photos a lot. He spent ages pointing and naming everyone.
Professional ones we waited about 6 months and he had some photos done with dd by the school photographer on school photo day. The head teacher spent ages singing and dancing to try get him to sit still!!!

Ds foster family had taken loads of photos of him and we have lovely album of the year he spent with them. Its a lovely record for him we are very lucky to have such a lot of photos from the foster family and birth family.

We had some pro photos done at home about a month after dd moved in, more the "you guys just play and I will snap away in the background" type, the best one was the very last shot! she loves seeing it hanging up, and loves seeing other pics of all of us and her hand paintings around the house... We have lots of pics of family everywhere so it seems totally natural to do so.

I would look for an at home "reportage" style local tog

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